No Stone Unturned

by Helen Watts

  Charlotte pulled a face.

  Mr Walker went on. ‘Any questions, ask me. Otherwise I expect your work in during the last week before the half-term holiday. Oh, and you can present it in any format you like.’

  This is a gift, reflected Kelly, thinking about the opening of the quarry and the impact of the railway when it came. Both of those things must have changed life in Wilmcote massively. It was perfect. All she needed to do was find out some more details. And she knew just the person to help her.

  PART 3

  Chapter 13 – Late Summer 1859

  One of Alice’s least favourite jobs at Stone Pit Farm house was cleaning the windows. The sheer amount of glass to polish was bad enough, but the frequency with which the windows needed cleaning was soul-destroying. In Wilmcote, the wind always seemed to blow in the same direction: across the quarry and over the open fields to the house, which meant that within a few days of being cleaned, the windows of Mr Greenslade’s otherwise immaculate home were thick with dust once again. In the summer, when the sunlight seemed to show up every speck, the sight made Alice cringe.

  How odd, she thought, I can live with dirty windows in my own home but here, where I am the paid housekeeper, it feels unforgiveable.

  By leaning out as far as she could, Alice could clean all but the largest of the windows by herself without a ladder. And it was while cleaning one of the upstairs bedroom windows that she saw an unfamiliar carriage approaching. It pulled up in the courtyard at the front of the farm house and a small group of well-suited gentleman alighted, talking solemnly to one another. Alice recognised the tallest one among them as the Chairman of the Stratford-upon-Avon Railway Company, Reginald Adkins. He had visited the house before, but always alone. This looked altogether more serious.

  Curious to discover what her husband’s master had come to see her own employer about, she hurried downstairs to let the visitors in. After leading them to Mr Greenslade’s study and offering them some refreshment, she left the door slightly ajar and hovered outside in the hall, from where she could just make out what was being said.

  The gentlemen got down to business straight away. A low, gruff voice, which Alice recognised as belonging to Adkins, seemed to be doing most of the talking.

  ‘We need to pull together on this, Greenslade,’ Adkins stressed. ‘Sir Charles Barry has threatened to withdraw his investment if the line isn’t complete within the next twelve months.’

  ‘But he can’t do that!’ exclaimed Greenslade.

  ‘Apparently he can, and we cannot afford to upset him or any of our other shareholders. Some of them are powerful men who can help us to secure business elsewhere. So we are going to be throwing every resource we have at the Stratford-upon-Avon project. There is no way on earth that the railway company is going to miss that deadline. But we can only do so much. There are two crucial ingredients in this mix: our railway and your stone.’

  ‘We have no problem with supply,’ said Greenslade defensively. ‘We have plenty of stone and plenty of hands to quarry it. Speed of transportation will only increase once the railway is here, so if everything is completed on time, we have no fear of missing our deadlines, either.’

  ‘As I said. We are in this together,’ Adkins continued, speaking more slowly now, ‘because it is not just my business Sir Charles is threatening, it’s yours.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Alice could hear a tremble in Greenslade’s voice.

  ‘Sir Charles has asked me to inform you that if you do not deliver the full quantity of the stone promised under your original contract to London in time for the State Opening of Parliament next year, you will not receive the payment due to you at present, let alone for the remaining parts of the order.’

  At that moment there was a movement on the other side of the door. Fearful that one of the visitors was about to discover her eavesdropping, Alice scurried off down the hall and darted through the kitchen doorway.

  She was making such a rumpus, banging about pans in the kitchen in her efforts to sound busy, that she did not hear Mr Greenslade ringing the bell a short while later, summoning her to his study so that she could show his visitors out. He slammed the front door behind them with so much force, however, that Alice heard it above her own clattering, and stopped what she was doing in time to hear the carriage wheels crunching on the gravel as they carried the visitors out of the courtyard. Assuming that it was safe to return, she scurried back down the hallway and knocked lightly on Greenslade’s office door.

  ‘Yes?’ he barked.

  Alice peeped around the door. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Greenslade, I didn’t realise your guests were leaving so soon. Naturally I would have shown them out for you.’

  ‘Yes, that would have been helpful, Alice!’ Greenslade snapped sarcastically. ‘I expect better of you. And you can tell that husband of yours that I shall be expecting better of him, too!’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.’

  ‘My men have been breaking their backs quarrying the extra stone we need to send down to London. But if your husband and his workmates on that railway don’t hurry up and finish the line soon, it will all be a waste of time. I shall be bankrupt, Alice. We won’t get paid for half of the stone that has already been delivered, let alone the rest that is promised. And remember, this quarry employs most of the men in this village. It’s not just me who stands to lose everything.’

  Greenslade’s words frightened Alice. It wasn’t just what he said, it was the manner in which he uttered it. Her employer had never been anything but gentle and polite to her, so to speak to her so harshly was very out of character. This was a man under the greatest of pressure.

  So, after work, Alice decided to do what she always did when she was upset: she rushed off to see her father.

  She found him in the drawing room of the vicarage, where he was preparing for his Sunday service. His face lit up when Alice entered the room but his expression quickly changed to concern when he saw how anxious his daughter seemed. ‘It’s that good-for-nothing husband of yours, again, isn’t it?’ he exclaimed. ‘What has he done now? If he’s laid a finger on you, or Billy…’

  Alice held up her hand to stop him. ‘No, it’s not William, Father. Not this time. It’s more serious than that. This could affect everyone in Wilmcote.’

  Alice sat down in the window seat next to her father and he held her hand while she recounted the conversation she had overheard between Richard Greenslade and the men from the railway company, and the uncharacteristically stern words he had directed at her.

  ‘It seems so unfair,’ she sighed. ‘No one could be working harder, and yet if the railway doesn’t get completed on time, everyone suffers. The quarry has to meet all its deadlines too, or Mr Greenslade won’t get the payment he is owed for the stone. The men could lose their jobs. The railway company will be under threat. Families will suffer. Me, Billy…we have little enough to live on as it is. And the pressure on William and the others will be huge. Everyone will blame them if they can’t finish the line on time. I don’t know whether he will cope.’

  Reverend Knott’s face was grey. ‘I have said it before, but if you hadn’t been carrying that man’s child, there is no way on God’s blessed earth that I would have let you marry him.’

  Alice opened her mouth to protest but her father put his finger to her lips to silence her. ‘Let me finish,’ he whispered. He took both her hands in his and looked into his daughter’s eyes. ‘Oh Alice my dear, I know you were young, and you thought you were in love with him, but be honest with me…if you knew then what you know now, would you really have chosen him?’

  Alice looked down at the dry, cracked skin of her hands, worn sore from so much cleaning and scrubbing, as they lay in the soft, safe, upturned palms of her father, and bit her lip. Then she murmured, ‘Well, I wouldn’t have Billy, would I? William may be a lowly labourer but he gave me the most precious thing I have.’

  The vicar let go of his daughter’s hands and turned slight
ly away. ‘Yes, there is that. But I feel as if I have let you down, allowing you to end up in a marriage where your welfare is so precarious. I always pictured you with a fine gentleman for a husband. By now you could have been living in a town house in Stratford-upon-Avon, not working your fingers to the bone as housekeeper and stuck in that tiny farm cottage. And even that meagre home was provided by me, your father, rather than the man you married.’ The scalding chamber of resentment inside him was bubbling to the surface like lava, and he seemed unable to stem the flow. ‘Thank God I put the cottage in your name and that swag-bellied fool doesn’t have a claim to it. Otherwise I wouldn’t put it past him to mortgage it from under you to pay for his next pint of ale!’

  ‘Father, please!’ Alice was torn between agreeing with her father and, out of sheer, stubborn pride, feeling that she ought to defend her husband. She felt partly to blame for William’s troubles. She had stood by and let her father demean him far too often, and she knew how little self-confidence William had left. The more he was told that he was good for nothing, the less he seemed capable of.

  But her loyalty to her husband aside, she worried even more for her son. She was determined that Billy would be allowed to carve a better future for himself—no matter what. And to do that she had to make sure that she could continue to feed and clothe him, and keep him in school long enough to complete his education. It was time to channel her father’s anger into action.

  ‘Whatever happens, Father, William cannot lose his job.’ She stood and began to pace back and forth in front of her father, who was still perched on the chintz cushions in the window seat. ‘And we know that he and the men are already stretched to their limits. So if Sir Charles and the railway company want to make sure that the branch line is completed in time, they will need to use more than threats. They will need to do their part. Now, that man Reginald Adkins, the Chairman of the railway company, he’s in your congregation, am I correct?’

  The vicar nodded.

  ‘Then you must speak with him. Stress the impact on us all if the railway is not finished. Persuade him to hire more hands. He needs to understand that they are putting too much on the shoulders of men like William who are already working at full stretch and that they are asking the near impossible.’

  The Reverend Frederick Knott was tired of digging his son-in-law out of hole after hole, but he found it impossible to refuse a heartfelt plea from his beloved daughter. Although he was not confident of success, he would at least try to give her what she wanted.

  Chapter 14 – September 2012

  Once Kelly had made her mind up about something, she wasted no time in making that thing happen. She had decided that she was ready to see Ben again, and she was desperate to tell him about the idea she had for her local history project. So as soon as she got home from school on that first day of term, she changed out of her school uniform and announced to her mum that she was taking Tyson for a walk.

  She knew roughly where Ben’s cottage must be, so she would head that way and keep on looking until she found it. If necessary, she would march right up to his front door and ask to see him. It didn’t matter what his parents thought of her, or who she was. She was his friend and she had a right to see him. And if his parents asked her where she and Ben had met, she would just say ‘Out on a walk,’ or something vague like that. There was no need to mention the railway. She would prove to Ben that she could be trusted to keep his secrets.

  After waiting at home all day for her, Tyson was delighted to be heading off towards the fields with Kelly once again. He pulled hard on the lead as they left the site, his stubby legs scrabbling at the ground and his breath rasping in his throat as he strained on his collar and did his best to drag Kelly along the track. They followed the footpath away from the caravan site and crossed the railway.

  In between the railway and the canal, the footpath ran through an unused area of wooded land which was overgrown with a tangle of brambles and hawthorn trees. In places, Kelly had to duck down and walk while bent forwards, to avoid snagging her hair in the thorns and spiky branches overhead.

  ‘This hasn’t been cleared in years, has it, mate?’ she said to Tyson, as he picked his way alongside her through the long grass and nettles. ‘I’m glad I’m not wearing shorts.’

  A little further along, they came into a clearing in front of an old tumbledown shed. Although substantial in size, the shed looked as if it hadn’t been opened in ages. Kelly had to admit it looked a bit creepy. She wondered if it was something to do with the quarry or the railway, and made a mental note to ask Ben.

  Feeling a little uncomfortable, Kelly hurried on. This time it was she who was tugging on the lead, trying to discourage Tyson from stopping to sniff the ground every few steps. She was relieved when, a little closer to the canal, the path started to widen again and they could move more quickly through the vegetation.

  More relaxed, Kelly started to mentally rehearse what she would say to Ben when she saw him, until she and Tyson were brought to an abrupt halt by a loud flapping of feathers, erupting from the long grass next to the path. Kelly ducked and Tyson lurched sideways as a pheasant flew just inches above their heads, emitting an ugly, squawking noise that reminded Kelly of a screeching rusty gate hinge.

  ‘Blimey! That made me jump out of my skin.’ Kelly put one hand on her chest while she held tightly onto Tyson’s lead with the other in case he tried to chase after it. ‘Stupid bird. Why did it wait until we were right on top of it? If it had just stayed there in the grass, we would never have known it was there, would we? We would have walked right past it.’

  Tyson, who had been just as surprised as Kelly, wagged his tail as if he agreed with her.

  Kelly couldn’t see where the pheasant had fled to, but as she looked into the long grass into which it had disappeared, a solid dark shape caught her eye. Something she hadn’t noticed before when coming this way. It looked like the top of a circle of stones, almost completely covered in ivy, poking out above the waist-high weeds. Curious, she picked up Tyson and waded through the grass to take a closer look. It was an old well, its wooden lid now rotten and split with age.

  ‘Wow! Look at this, Tyson,’ she exclaimed. ‘I wonder how long this has been here.’

  She put Tyson down on the ground and told him to sit while she leaned over and peered down through the cracks in the wood. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust but then she began to make out the moss-covered stones lining the shaft and then, way, way down at the bottom, what looked like the glint of a deep, dark pool, faintly illuminated by a thin shaft of sunlight beaming down through the broken wooden lid.

  The air inside the well smelled musty, like rotting compost, and felt icy cool on Kelly’s face. At first she was entranced by the way the flickering light danced about on the water down below, but then her blood ran cold. There was something else down there, she was sure of it. A flash of something solid. What on earth could it be? A water rat or something? A stick or plank of wood, perhaps, floating about? Was it still there? Had she imagined it? Without thinking, Kelly leaned further forwards until the tips of her toes were only just brushing the ground.

  ‘Kelly!’

  Startled by the voice crying out behind her, Kelly pushed down on the wooden lid with both hands to propel her body round. There was a sickening cracking noise as her left hand broke through one of the rotten planks, sending splinters of wood raining down into the black void beneath her. Her body span and her hip slammed hard against the rim of the well.

  ‘Be careful!’

  Gripping the cold stones with her right hand, Kelly pushed herself back up onto her feet. She blew out hard.

  ‘What the hell were you doing, Kel?’

  It was Ben, breathless, his nose only a few centimetres from hers, eyes wide in alarm.

  ‘You called me Kel,’ she said, so pleased to see him that she didn’t think to answer his question. A broad smile spread across her face, breaking the tension, and Ben returned her grin.
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  The two of them held one another’s gaze for a few moments, until Tyson shattered the silence by letting out three short little yaps to remind them that he was still there, keen to continue his walk.

  ‘Thank you,’ stammered Kelly, taking a step backwards. ‘That probably wasn’t very wise of me, was it?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Ben. ‘That whole lid could collapse at any moment. I thought you were going to fall in. But listen, about the last time we met. What I said. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  ‘No, I know. I over-reacted.’

  ‘Well, maybe just a little. I’m sure my parents would really like you. I’m sorry if I upset you.’

  ‘I’m sorry too, for flying off the handle. It’s just that I’m so used to people jumping to conclusions about me that I sometimes jump to the wrong conclusions about them. I don’t give people a chance.’

  ‘Friends again, then?’ said Ben.

  ‘Friends? Oh we’re more than that now,’ replied Kelly, ‘We’re partners and friends. Come on, let’s find somewhere to sit down and talk. I’ve got lots to tell you.’

  Ben led Kelly and Tyson along the rest of the path to the canal where the three of them flopped down on the grass at the side of the footbridge in the early evening sunshine. Kelly told him all about her history project and was delighted when he agreed to help her.

  ‘We could make it a joint project,’ she suggested. ‘Do you think your mum would like that? It could be part of your history lessons, too?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘Besides,’ Kelly continued. ‘I was thinking. Won’t your parents know lots of other stuff about the history of this area, if they’ve lived here for so long? You said that the cottage had been in your family for years.’