The Stone Book Quartet

by Alan Garner

  ‘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.

  They went up the field at the back of the house and onto Glaze Hill. When they reached the top the sun was ready for setting. The weathercock on Saint Philip’s was losing light, and woods stretched out.

  ‘I can’t see the churches,’ said Mary. ‘When we were up there this afternoon l could.’

  ‘That’s because they’re all of a height,’ said Father. ‘I told you Glaze Hill was higher.’

  Glaze Hill was the middle of three spurs of land, The Wood Hill came in from the right, and Daniel Hill from the left, and they met at the Engine Vein. The Engine Vein was a deep crevice in the rocks, and along it went the tramroad for the miners who dug galena, cobalt and malachite. The thump of the engine that pumped water out of the Vein could often be heard through the ground on different parts of the hill, when the workings ran close to the surface.

  Now it was dusk, and the engine quiet. The tramroad led down to the head of the first stope, and there was a ladder for men to climb into the cave.

  Mary was not allowed at the Vein. It killed at least once every year, and even to go close was dangerous, because the dead sand around the edge was hard and filled with little stones that slipped over the crag.

  Father walked on the sleepers of the tramroad down into the Engine Vein.

  ‘It’s nearly night,’ said Mary. ‘It’ll be dark.’

  ‘We’ve candles,’ said Father.

  There was a cool smell, and draughts of sweet air. The roof of the Vein began, and they were under the ground. Water dripped from the roof onto the sandstone, splashing echoes. The drops fell into holes. They had fallen for so many years in the same place that they had worn the rock. Mary could get her fingers into some of the holes, but they were deeper than her hands.

  Above and behind her, Mary saw the last of the day. In front and beneath was the stope, where it was always night.

  Father took the whole bundle of candles and set them on the rocks and lit them. They showed how dark it was in the stope.

  ‘Wait while you get used to it,’ said Father. You soon see better. Now what about that roof?’

  Mary looked up into the shadows. ‘It’s not dimension stone,’ she said. ‘There’s a grain to it, and it’s all ridge and furrow.’

  ‘But if you’d been with me that day,’ said Father, ‘when I was prenticed and walked to the sea, you’d have stood on sand just the same as that. The waves do it, going back and to. And it makes the ridges proper hard, and if you left it I reckon it could set into stone. But the tide goes back and to, back and to, and wets it. And your boots sink in and leave a mark.’

  ‘If that’s the sea, why’s it under the ground?’ said Mary.

  ‘And whose are those boots?’ said Father.

  There were footprints in the roof, flattening the ripples, as though a big bird had walked there.

  ‘Was that Noah’s flood, too?’ said Mary.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ said Father. ‘If it was, that bantam never got into the ark.’

  ‘It must’ve been as big as Saint Philip’s Cockerel,’ said Mary.

  ‘Bigger,’ said Father. ‘And upside down.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Mary.

  ‘It would if we could plunder it deep enough,’ said Father. ‘I reckon that if you’re going to put the sea in a hill and turn the world over and let it dry, then you’ve got to be doing before nine o’clock in the morning. But preachers aren’t partial to coming down here, so it doesn’t matter. Does it?’

  He blew out all the candles except two. He gave one to Mary and stepped onto the ladder. Mary went with him, and climbed between his arms down into the stope.

  ‘It’d take some plucking,’ she said.

  ‘If it had feathers.’

  The stope was the shape of a straw beehi
ve and tunnels led everywhere. Mary couldn’t see the top of the ladder.

  ‘If you’d fallen, you’d have been killed dead as at Saint Philip’s,’ said Father.

  ‘It’s different,’ said Mary. ‘There’s no height.’

  ‘There’s depth, and that’s no different than height.’ said Father.

  ‘It doesn’t call you,’ said Mary.

  Father held Mary’s hand sailor’s grip and went into a tunnel under a ledge at the bottom of the stope. They didn’t go far. There was a shaft in the rock, not a straight one, but when Father bridged it with his feet, the pebbles rattled down for a long time. It was easy climbing, even with a candle to be held, because the rock kept changing, and each change made a shelf. There was puddingstone, marl and foxbench, and only the marl was slippery.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Father. They were at a kink in the shaft.

  ‘What about further down?’ said Mary.

  ‘It’s only rubbish gangue from here to the bottom; neither use nor ornament. Although there was a man, him as sank this shaft, and he could read books and put a letter together. But he lost his money, for all his reading. Now if he’d read rocks instead of books, it might have been a different story, you see.’

  Father held his candle out to the side. There was a crack, not a tunnel. The rock itself had made it.

  ‘Hold fast to your light,’ said Father. ‘And keep the matches out of the wet.’

  Father had to crawl. Mary could stand, but even she had to squeeze, because of the narrowness.

  The crack went up and down, wavering through the hill. Then Father stopped. He couldn’t turn his head to speak, but he could crouch on his heel. ‘Climb over,’ he said.

  Mary pulled herself across his back. A side of wall had split off and jammed in the passage, almost closing it.

  ‘Can you get through there?’ said Father.

  ‘Easy,’ said Mary.

  ‘Get through and then listen,’ said Father.

  Mary wriggled past the flake and stood up. The passage went on beyond her light. Father’s candle made a dark hole of where she had come, and she could see his boots and one hand. He pushed the bobbin of bad ends through to her, and six candles. He kept hold of the loose end of silk.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Mary. ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘You still want a book for Sundays?’ said Father. ‘Even if you can’t read?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary.

  ‘Then this is what we’re doing,’ said Father. ‘So you listen. You’re to keep the lucifers dry, and use only one candle. It should be plenty. Let the silk out, but don’t pull on it, else it’ll snap. It’s to fetch you back if you’ve no light, and that’s all it’s for. Now then. You’ll End you go down a bit of steep, and then the rock divides. Follow the malachite. Always follow the malachite. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘After the malachite there’s some old foxbench, then a band of white dimension, and a lot of wet when you come to the Tough Tom. Can you remember it all?’

  ‘Malachite, foxbench, dimension, Tough Tom,’ said Mary.

  ‘Always follow the malachite,’ said Father. ‘And if there’s been another rockfall, don’t trust loose stuff. And think on: there isn’t anybody can reach you. You’re alone.’

  ‘What must I do when I get to the Tough Tom?’ said Mary.

  ‘You come back and tell me if you want that book,’ said Father. ‘And if you do, you shall have it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mary.

  The crack in the hill ran straight for a while and was easier than the first part. She held her candle in one hand and the bobbin in the other. She had tucked the other candles and the lucifer matches into her petticoat. She went slowly down the rock, and the silk unwound behind her.

  The steep was not enough to make her climb, and water trickled from above, over the rock, and left a green stain of malachite. She stopped when the passage divided, but there was nothing to worry her. She went to the left, with the malachite. The other passage had none.

  She took the silk through the hill. The green malachite faded, and she passed by a thin level of foxbench sand, hard and speckled.

  Then the walls were white. She was at the dimension. The crack sloped easily downward and was opening. She no longer had to move sideways. Her feet scuffed in the sand, but in front of her she could see brown water. Mary held her candle low. At the bottom of the wall she saw the beginning of a band of clay, the Tough Tom red marl that never let water through. She went forward slowly into the wet. The floor was stiff and tacky under her boots, and behind her the silk floated in curves. But the crack went no deeper. The ground was level, and her light showed a hump of Tough Tom above the water, glistening.

  Mary stopped again. There was nothing else, over, behind, below; only the Tough Tom humping out of the water, and the white dimension stone. And the crack finished at the end of her candlelight.

  ‘Father!’

  There was no reply. She hadn’t counted how much silk had unwound.

  ‘Father!’

  There was plenty of candle left, but it showed her nothing to explain why she was there.

  ‘Father!’

  Not even an echo. There wasn’t the room for one. But she turned. There hadn’t been an echo, but her voice had sounded louder beyond the Tough Tom.

  Mary scrambled up the hump, slithering in the wet. Then she looked around her, and saw.

  The end of the crack was as broad as two stalls and as high as a barn. The red Tough Tom was a curved island above its own water. The walls were white and pale yellow. There was no sound. The water did not drip. It sank through the stone unheard, and seeped along the marl.

  Mary saw Father’s mason mark drawn on the wall. It was faint and black, as if drawn with soot. Next to it was an animal, falling. It had nearly worn itself away, but it looked like a bull, a great shaggy bull. It was bigger than it seemed at first, and Father’s mark was on it, making the mark like a spear or an arrow.

  The bull was all colours, but some of the stone had shed itself in the damp air. The more Mary looked, the bigger the bull grew. It had turned around every wall, as if it was moving and dying.

  Mary had come through the hill to see Father’s mark on a daubed bull. And near the bull and the mark there was a hand, the outline of a hand. Someone had splayed a hand on the wall and painted round it with the Tough Tom. Fingers and thumb.

  Mary put the candle close. A white dimension hand. She lifted her own and laid it over the hand on the wall, not touching. Both hands were the same size. She reached nearer. They were the same size. She touched. The rock was cold, but for a moment it had almost felt warm. The hands fitted. Fingers and thumb and palm and a bull and Father’s mark in the darkness under the ground.

  Mary stood back, in the middle of the Tough Tom, and listened to the silence. It was the most secret place she had ever seen. A bull drawn for secrets. A mark and a hand alone with the bull in the dark that nobody knew.

  She looked down. And when she looked down she shouted. She wasn’t alone. The Tough Tom was crowded. All about her in that small place under the hill that led nowhere were footprints.

  They were the footprints of people, bare and shod. There were boots and shoes and clogs, heels, toes, shallow ones and deep ones, clear and sharp as if made altogether, trampling each other, hundreds pressed in the clay where only a dozen could stand. Mary was in a crowd that could never have been, thronging, as real as she was. Her feet made prints no fresher than theirs.

  And the bull was still dying under the mark, and the one hand still held.

  There was nowhere to run, no one to hear. Mary stood on the Tough Tom and waited. She daren’t jerk the thread to feel Father’s presence; he was so far away that the thread would have broken.

  Then it was over. She knew the great bull on the rock enclosing her, and she knew the mark and the hand. The invisible crowd was not there, and the footprints in the Tough Tom churned motionless.

&
nbsp; She had seen. Now there was the time to go. Mary lifted the thread and made skeins of it as she went past the white dimension, foxbench and malachite to the candle under the fall.

  Father had moved to make room for her.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve seen,’ said Mary. ‘All of it.’

  ‘You’ve touched the hand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  They went back to the shaft, and up, and out. The sky seemed a different place. All things led to the bull and the mark and the hand in the cave. Trees were trying to find it with their roots. The rain in the clouds must fall to the ground and into the rock to the Tough Tom.

  ‘That’s put a quietness on you,’ said Father.

  They came over Glaze Hill.

  ‘Why did you set your mark on?’ said Mary.

  ‘I didn’t. It was there when I went.’

  ‘When did you go?’

  ‘When I was about your size. My father took me same as today. We have to go before we’re too big to get past the fall, though I reckon, years back, the road was open; if you knew it was there.’

  ‘When did you go last?’ said Mary.

  ‘We go just once,’ said Father. ‘So that we’ll know.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Only us. Neither Leahs nor Allmans. Us.’

  ‘But there were ever so many feet,’ said Mary. ‘The place was teeming.’

  ‘We’ve been going a while,’ said Father.

  ‘And that bull,’ said Mary.

  ‘That’s a poser. There’s been none like it in my time; and my father, he hadn’t seen any.’

  ‘What is it all?’ said Mary.

  ‘The hill. We pass it on: and once you’ve seen it, you’re changed for the rest of your days.’

  ‘Who else of us?’ said Mary.

  ‘Nobody,’ said Father, ‘except me: and now you: it’s always been for the eldest: and from what I heard my father say, it was only ever for lads. But if they keep on stoping after that malachite the way they’re going at the Engine Vein, it’ll be shovelled up in a year or two without anybody noticing even. At one time of day, before the Engine Vein and that chap who could read books, we must have been able to come at it from the top. But that’s all gone. And if the old bull goes, you’ll have to tell your lad, even if you can’t show him.’