The Thirteen Stones

by Finegan, KT

  How easy would that life be? Would I be lonely and miss my London friends? Would I ever find love again? Of one thing I was certain. Derek would not be a part of this new me, wherever I ended up. Our relationship was over, finished. I wouldn’t go back there.

  With that thought in mind, my mobile phone buzzed with a text from my friend Jen. I called her quickly as I knew she was always up and on her way to the office by seven am.

  She answered just as she was heading into the Underground station so we spoke quickly before she lost signal. I told her that I was thinking of staying, and waited to hear her scream at me. I felt sure that she’d think I was making a huge mistake.

  To my amazement, she said, ‘Go for it, Kirsty. If I had the chance, I would. Do you really want to be spending the rest of your life here? In a job that bores you? If I was you, I’d jump on the opportunity. This is a huge gift your gran has given you. When we were at university, you wanted to be a writer. Maybe this is your time to do that. Remember that movie we loved – Dead Poet’s Society? Captain, my Captain?’ By this time the signal was fading, but as if from another world I heard her whisper, ‘Carpe diem, Kirsty… seize the day!’ And then she was gone.

  I was shaken. I had expected… no, I had hoped that she would have laughed off my idea and told me to go back to London. Instead, she had told me what I would have told her. Did I really need her approval to make such a major decision? Did I need anyone’s approval? What had happened to the girl I was; the girl who laughed and loved, wrote and dreamed? When was the last time I had seized any day? Maybe it was time… what was the worst that could happen?

  I got up, showered and dressed, my head full of all the reasons not to move back home, then all the reasons not to go back to London. Home. Would it still be home without Gran?

  I turned again to the little book. Somewhere within it was information that would help me understand what was happening to this town. My home. I read again those pages that I could make out, and flicked through it, looking for a clue, for something. Gran had told me in her letter to read the book. She’d told me to find the door and use the keys. What other door in this town did the keys unlock? And how could I possibly find it? I had found the letter in the book. They were connected. Connected but separate, just like the Stones.

  I turned again to the map, which was drawn across two pages. That’s when I noticed that one of the pages was thicker than the other. Some of the other pages at the front were stuck together with damp and old age, but there was something different about this.

  I heard Angel leave for work as I went to the kitchen in search of a sharp knife and better lighting to look more closely at this thicker page. Carefully I prised one page from another, and at the back of the map found a short list written in tiny script. Someone had glued two pages together to hide this from prying eyes.

  What had Gran said? Words were energy. She must have known about this list and hidden it in plain sight; it looked like the rest of the book.

  It was a list of the Stones, nothing else. Nothing new. I let out the breath I was holding and it blew onto the book. My breath warmed the page and suddenly some words written in red ink began to materialise in front of me. As the paper cooled, the words disappeared again.

  I couldn’t believe it. Was it a trick of the light? Or my overworked imagination? ‘Angels, Gran, help me,’ I whispered.

  I walked over to the still warm kettle and held the page over the steam. A few words appeared as if by magic, across centuries, a warning. ‘No blood on the Stones or…’ The rest of the message was obliterated.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I felt sick. This was not a good sign. It couldn’t be. What blood would be spilled on the Stones? Is that what had happened to the Romans? Did they sacrifice an animal on the Stones and it was their downfall? What did that mean for us? We wouldn’t do a sacrifice, would we?

  I knew I had to speak to Angel and Grizelle. At that moment my phone vibrated again. A text message from Angel: Come downstairs as soon as you can. It’s started. They’re digging out the Stone at the quarry!

  I finished dressing, pulled on my hat and scarf, and the waterproof coat I’d worn the previous day, still with the little torch in the pocket. I didn’t take my bag but put a ten pound note in my other pocket along with my gloves, then reached for Gran’s keys and pushed them deep inside.

  By the time I walked into the café, the place was busy. Everyone seemed animated and lots of copies of the local newspaper, The Lanarkshire News, were being passed round. Some members of the environmentalist group from the other night sat in the corner, finishing off their breakfast.

  Angel waved me over to the empty table beside them, then left me the newspaper whilst she sorted out some tea and toast for us, and said Grizelle was on her way.

  I noticed a woman in the group watching me as I read the headlines. Planning permission had been announced for the quarry extension, and there was a map of the new area. The Thirteenth Stone was to be removed and placed in the local Museum, according to the article, and excavation would come right up to the graveyard and all the way over to the wall at Gran’s cottage. No, my cottage! What had been a tranquil place would have an open cast gravel quarry a few feet from the garden. This was outrageous! I’d had no idea it would come so close.

  The woman from the group could see from the expression on my face that I was horrified. She leaned across to me. ‘Don’t worry, we’re here to do all we can to make sure that doesn’t go ahead. We’ll chain ourselves to the equipment if we have to. We’ve done it before.’

  I looked at her properly for the first time. She smiled and held out her hand to shake mine. ‘I’m Sally.’

  I introduced myself, but she said she already knew who I was. She had known Gran well, and expressed her condolences for my loss. I don’t know what surprised me more, that she had known Gran, knew me, or that she was sympathetic, polite, and very well spoken. Not at all what I had expected.

  She said she was originally from Cornwall but that her family were Scottish. She had been living at the peace camp at Faslane – the nuclear submarine site near to Glasgow – when she’d heard about the quarry expansion plans. She and some of the others had headed straight to the town, and wanted to do all they could to help.

  ‘Your gran let us camp in the meadow at her cottage until the weather turned icy,’ she explained.

  I was shocked. I had been convinced that this group were aggressive and the cause of the fighting at the Memorial Hall, yet instead they seemed almost shy. One of the older men in the group, his hair closely shaven like Sally’s, went up to the counter to settle their bill. The others joined in our conversation whilst they pulled on lots of layers of clothing. The day was bitterly cold and I wondered where they were staying.

  ‘We’ve got a good deal at the caravan park coz it’s winter,’ one of the younger dreadlocked boys told me, almost as if he had read my mind. He had beautiful big brown eyes, with super-long lashes. ‘We’re getting by, doing some odd jobs round the toon. People have been really kind. Your gran let us take some of her veggies from the garden. Hope that’s still okay with you.’

  ‘Of course it is, not a problem,’ I replied. ‘Where are you going now? Are you going to the quarry?’

  ‘Too right,’ said an older woman, sitting at the edge of the group. Her long thick hair was white, and left to hang free like a young girl’s. She wore a couple of fleece tops, scarves and shawls in every colour of the rainbow.

  I felt so corporate in my black clothes and dark jacket. The thought ran through my head again: when did I lose the colour in my life?

  Angel joined me as the group left, hugging them all in turn. I mean proper hugging. Not a quick air kiss like I usually did with friends, but holding each of them in turn. Nurturing them. Something else to compare with my life in London.

  They had no sooner left than Grizelle arrived, and
we all tucked into thick toasted bread and butter, with little pots of marmalade for them and raspberry jam for me.

  ‘It’s started,’ Grizelle announced, as she sipped her tea. ‘The whole town is in uproar. The Lanarkshire News published the story this morning. People are angry. The newspaper knew all about it two days ago and sat on it to get a reaction. Well, they got one alright. I think the editor will have to go. People are demanding his resignation. All the shops are shut; everyone is going to the quarry. There will be a bloodbath if they’re not careful.’

  I felt my own blood chill at her comment and explained the message I had found earlier in the morning.

  ‘We have to go there now. This very minute,’ Angel said. ‘Let me get my coat and tell the girls where I’m going. We’ll take the shortcut through the graveyard.’

  Within a few minutes we were outside joining the hundreds of people on their way to the quarry. It was like the summer Lanimer’s festivities, but rather than laughing and joking the people were angry. Heads down against the biting wind, we saw men and women of all ages, young children, teenagers in school uniform, babes in pushchairs, all rushing through the graveyard to save their Stone.

  We walked as quickly as we could, taking one of the alternative stone-chipped paths as I didn’t want to pass Granny’s grave. Not yet; it was too soon.

  The birds that usually perched along the top of the wall had flown off, disrupted by the throngs of townspeople cutting through to the far gate. From there was a well-worn path, although probably overgrown at this time of year, which ran the two miles or so to the edge of the quarry. I loved the view from the edge of town – the fields and paddocks, sheep and horses, the height and snow-topped majesty of Tinto Hill in the distance, the falls ahead of us, and the quarry hidden behind a range of old beech trees.

  As we got to the gate, we heard people in front of us cry out in shock and despair before they disappeared from view. We soon realised why. Instead of the usual sheep-filled pastures acting as a buffer between the graveyard and the quarry, it was like looking onto First World War trenches. A couple of the older town residents stopped and stood to one side crying. One of the men had his head in his hands. I could hear people sobbing, ‘Why? Why?’

  The site had been transformed from lush greenery to twisted, exposed rock and gravel. Huge earth-moving equipment had ripped away fertile soil to expose the ragged edges of muck. The noise from the machinery was head-splitting, and we could feel the ground beneath our feet shake and tremble. Some of the little children put their hands over their ears.

  The pathway from the cemetery came to an abrupt stop, and rather than meander downwards to the river below, it now had wide, mucky terraces cut into the ground, twenty feet or so wide, dropping down to the deepest point sixty or seventy feet below the graveyard gate.

  People were still flooding through the gates behind us, each stopping to take in the full horror of their once beautiful vista reduced to rubble. They then stumbled and slipped their way through mud to stop on the terraces, sinking into muck and filth. There was a terrible stench in the air, as if a huge drain had been opened to spew out its poison. Some older residents from the local care home, which overlooked the scene, were out in their garden wearing pyjamas, slippers, and dressing gowns.

  It was a bizarre sight. One half of the group wore hard hats, safety boots, and high visibility vests; on the other side of an invisible line stood ordinary people, toddlers in prams, schoolkids, the butcher and baker in their white coats, and all the other shop owners. Horrified, people stopped, stared, cried… and after a few minutes, raged and ranted.

  Mobile phones came out, videoing the full extent of the damage to the land. As far as the eye could see towards the river and way in the distance towards the mountains, the land lay ripped open, exposed, vulnerable, and ugly.

  In the distance we could hear sirens, and soon saw the blue flashing lights of a police car coming up the road from the quarry’s main entrance point. It was as if everyone was waiting for them to arrive, frozen in horror at the tableau in front of them.

  As we stood on a mucky terrace about twenty feet down from the graveyard, it was hard to believe that the earth-moving equipment could have made such short work of natural beauty.

  I whispered to Angel and Grizelle, ‘It looks like they’ve been working on this for longer than a few hours, doesn’t it?’

  We managed to slip and slither further down towards the front where we saw that one of the huge mechanical monsters had stopped at the March Stone; its steel jaws sat right at the Stone, scratching into the surface. The driver was still in his cab thirty feet above our heads. As we drew closer, we could see what had stopped its progress.

  Sally and the older lady with the white hair had climbed onto the digger’s heavy front blade. The rest of the protest group were lying down in a line, hands outstretched to each other like a multi-coloured paper chain of humanity. You had to admire their guts and stamina. It was freezing.

  People on the terraces began cheering as news of their exploits reached them. Around us, loud whistles and shouts of encouragement broke out.

  I looked at Angel and Grizelle. ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling about this,’ I warned.

  After what seemed like an age, the police car eventually reached this new front line. I recognised the desk sergeant as he picked his way across the field towards the main digger and spoke to Sally and the older woman. Angel told me her name was Maggie.

  By this time an official from the quarry had also arrived in another big truck. In hard hat and wearing a high visibility vest over his suit, shirt and tie, he looked important and more used to sitting in an office than being out on an exposed site. This company really meant business. It all looked very hostile as he spoke to the police then shouted at the group, and to anyone who would listen, that he had had enough and was moving the Stone whether the women were on it or not.

  This only served to rile the police sergeant, who told him to get the site in order as he was surely breaking every health and safety regulation possible. Looking back towards the terraces and the gate, I could see more people pushing through, each one having their ‘oh my god’ moment as they took in the horror of the scene. It was like waking up to find a war had started in your garden.

  Sleet was falling and a light dusting of snow lay on the ground, which was an excuse for some people to leave. Staff from the care home carefully guided their charges back inside, but after a few minutes we could see them standing at the upstairs windows not wanting to miss anything.

  It seemed that the sergeant’s words had had some effect on the quarry rep, as he moved to one side to talk into first a walkie-talkie, then a mobile phone. Assuming that the company was calling off the excavations, there was a cheer from the onlookers. But their hopes were short lived when more of the big machines began trundling towards us, and we realised that this was becoming a stand-off between the town and the quarry.

  The biting wind, sleet and snow was affecting us all. My fingers were deep in my pockets but I was still freezing. I was sure Sally and Maggie sitting on the metal edge of the digger must have been icy cold, and the group lying on the ground would be in danger of hypothermia. We heard a helicopter circle overhead and saw that it was one of the Scottish news channels filming events.

  Up on the hillside, someone began singing ‘We shall not be moved’, and soon the whole crowd was joining in. It was funny, but at the same time very moving. I had a feeling that Gran would have approved.

  A shout went up and I turned to see some of the town councillors forcing themselves through the gate. They looked shocked to see how the machines had gouged out the beauty of the earth, even if they had agreed to it happening. As they made their way down the mud slide terraces, a couple of them slipped and fell, humiliated as the crowd jeered. It was unlikely many of them would be re-elected after this.

  Six of the officials went forwa
rd, screaming at the police sergeant to get some sort of order restored and to get people away. It was obvious from the look on his face that he didn’t have much time for council officials. He told them that he had called for reinforcements to protect the public from the quarry equipment, and that as far as he was concerned until he received official notification, the public had every right to be on public land. He added that he believed the quarry company was trespassing and could be charged with criminal damage.

  The crowd roared its support, and I suddenly remembered that the last time I had seen the sergeant it was when he led his horse through the Lanimer’s Day parade. He wouldn’t be letting the Stone go without a fight. For the first time that day I felt my shoulders relax a bit.

  We balanced precariously on the exposed rock and thick deep ruts cut into the mud, but with the high wind we were all in danger of falling over. I could feel my feet sucking and sticking, and most of the fifty or so people standing around the big truck were not dressed or shod for the conditions.

  The sergeant approached Sally and Maggie and the group on the ground and suggested that they all relax, as it was likely to be a long day. He offered them blankets, clearly not caring whether he riled the quarry owners and the councillors.

  None of the protesters accepted his kind offer, but the boys on the ground sat up, still in position, and then took it in turns to stand up and jump up and down for a few minutes. Someone squeezed through the crowd with some hot drinks for them, prompting another cheer from the terraces.

  Apart from the cold, there was almost a carnival-like atmosphere… until we looked down and saw the huge ripped devastation across the fields. Hundreds of the townspeople now stood, waiting, on what was left of their hillside. Sleet and snow continued to flurry around us, and the sky darkened and lowered onto our shoulders.