by Simon Mayo
In time Itch elaborated on his drawings. They now featured little earthworks and small figures working like ants down a pit. He had drawn the image so many times he could close his eyes and see it still. It was like a flash bulb that had burned its way onto his retina.
Four hundred feet; sea-level for thirty feet; a total of 1,285 feet. A lightning bolt into the earth.
Watkins also described the conditions the men had endured, and the many accidents. With a mixture of relish and horror, he related how the teams had dug by candlelight, often naked in the extreme heat and the confines of a four-foot circle. They bricked the well as they went, building a chimney into the earth from the top down. The earth was passed up in buckets by winchmen, who stood on small platforms cut into the side of the shaft. There were many tales of the well being haunted. Some said a nun’s body was at the bottom; others said it was one of the winchmen who had fallen to his death.
Watkins would finish the story by recounting how, at a change of shift one Sunday evening in 1862, one of the miners had noticed the bottom of the well bulging upwards. It was only gradual but the Earth’s crust had appeared to be buckling. The alarm sounded, and the four diggers began their mad scramble to the surface. As they raced upwards, they shouted to the winchmen they passed to leave their buckets and platforms and get out as quickly as possible. Soon the men were climbing ladders faster than they had ever climbed before, listening out for the roar of a surging wave of water breaking through the piston head at the foot of the well.
It took the men forty-five minutes to make their escape. When the crust did break, flooding the shaft, it took only two minutes for the water to reach the surface, just seconds after the last exhausted miner had climbed out at the top. The water brought with it a murderous tidal wave of machinery and tools left over from four years of digging, scattering the terrified men in all directions as buckets, ladders and bricks also cascaded out of the well.
‘That part of the school,’ said Watkins as he finished his story, ‘was always pretty scary.’
There was an awed silence for a few seconds, before the hands went up and questions were called out:
‘Did you see the ghost, sir?’
‘Did you ever go down there, sir?’
‘Did you ever throw anything down there, sir?’
Watkins always smiled at the last comment. ‘Only pupils who really annoyed me,’ he said.
A teacher’s joke, funny only to teachers.
The question Itch now wished he had asked was: ‘How much of all that was true, sir, and how much have you made up to impress us?’
However, it was too late for that now. He had gambled that John Watkins was telling the truth. He had remembered the story and ‘the lightning bolt into the earth’ he had drawn so many times as he and Jack were being driven to London by Flowerdew and Kinch. He had immediately known where he was taking the rocks. He knew where they had to go.
They had come from deep in the Earth, and that was where, rampant radiation poisoning permitting, they were returning.
28
THE FINAL SECTION of corridor did indeed lead to the woodwork room, the metalwork room, and finally the science lab. Each room had two large windows onto the corridor so some murky light found its way into them. Leaving the rucksack by the notice board, Itch jogged over to the woodwork-room windows. Peering through, he could make out the workbenches with their lathes; short planks of wood leaned against the wall near the door. In the metalwork room he could see the racks of tools in glass cabinets. The science lab had its wooden work surfaces with gas taps for the Bunsen burners. Behind the teacher’s desk, rows of chemicals in assorted jars were lined up neatly.
According to Watkins it was the woodwork room that contained the well, but there was absolutely no sign of it. Itch darted around the shadowy benches and machinery, peering under desks and moving chairs. Why would you hide it? More to the point, how could you hide it? The world’s deepest hand-dug well must leave a mark, surely, even if it had been finished a century and a half ago. Itch didn’t know if he was expecting to smell a huge unused well, presumably full of stagnant water, but he couldn’t detect anything other than sawdust.
He tried the metalwork room, with its anvils and cold forge. The cabinets behind the desk housed some of the more dangerous-looking tools and drills with assorted bits, but there was no sign of any well. The science lab had all the familiar gassy smells of the one at the CA, but it was very small, and a quick inspection revealed nothing. Even though it was almost dark, Itch was sure he hadn’t missed it.
He paced furiously back to the woodwork room. The dreadful thought that Watkins had made the whole thing up was beginning to grow in the back of his mind. Itch dismissed it as best he could and tried to remember what his geography teacher had actually said. He must have missed something. You just cannot hide something this big, he thought. Then, out loud: ‘Come on, where are you?!’
He was sure Watkins had said something about ‘the entrance of the woodwork room’, and he got down on his hands and knees. A close-up inspection revealed scuffed floorboards, a stone threshold and nothing else. He stood up, feeling sure that, some-how, the answer was here but he had missed it.
He shook his head, as if to dislodge unhelpful ideas. He went over it again:
The entrance to the woodwork room.
He was there now. No well.
Sure?
Positive.
Had it always been the woodwork room?
No idea, but it wasn’t in the other rooms, anyway.
Had the entrance always been in the same place?
An electric charge of excitement passed through Itch’s tired body and he felt the adrenalin kick in.
Got it.
He ran back to the wall where the notice board was. Behind the wooden frame was the unmistakable outline of a door. Or where a door had once been: the original door to the woodwork room.
He looked down. He was standing on a threadbare piece of carpet about four metres square pushed up against the wall. That’s what had been nagging him – the change in the floor he was standing on. He’d been so excited to see the posters he hadn’t properly registered what was beneath his feet.
He dragged the rucksack off the carpet, propping it against the wall. He pulled at the carpet, but it was heavy and it shifted only slightly. Kneeling down, he started to roll it up instead, hands shaking with excitement. As he reached the place where the old door had been, the flooring changed. Instead of the lino of the corridor he saw old floorboards. He continued rolling up the carpet until it was one long tube along the woodwork-room wall.
Itch stood up. He had revealed eighteen floorboards, each about four metres long. They had been nailed down and glued together. He ran back into the woodwork room, grabbing an assortment of hammers and chisels, and set to work. Chipping at the glue and prising out the nails, Itch removed the boards one by one. The first four on each side revealed only concrete, but that changed when he reached the middle ten planks. As he lifted them up, he saw a huge, riveted, square metal plate with a recessed centrepiece.
‘You beauty,’ said Itch.
As John Watkins told it, there were occasional visits to the well, with pupils allowed to peer into the gloom, thrilled and fearful. Itch assumed this seal hadn’t been in place then – it wasn’t the kind of well-cap you could just whip off any time you wanted to tell your story. The steel plate was at least three metres across with a recessed circle in the middle – Itch guessed the central circle was about a metre in diameter, with a raised handle, and secured by eighteen large screws around its circumference. The plate itself was riveted into what he assumed was concrete.
He had a selection of screwdrivers ready: he took a large Phillips and walked out onto the steel plate. Kneeling down, he placed one hand in the centre of the circle, momentarily imagining the vast hole beneath him and shuddering. One by one, he started to work on the screws. They had been in position for years and most were, unsurprisingly, stuck
fast. When one proved too much, Itch moved on and tried the next. Completing the circle, he had only removed four screws – each one about four centimetres long. Reaching for the largest hammer, he hit the circular panel next to the remaining screws. The metallic clanging echoed down the corridor and around the school, but Itch barely noticed. This was all taking too long. His own time-clock was ticking, and he had no idea how difficult this final task was going to be. Occasionally he coughed to clear his throat, and dark blood speckled the steel plate.
The sharp jolt of metal hammer on metal plate dislodged enough rust and grit to loosen the screws, and Itch worked away at them as fast as he could. As each one came free, he put it carefully in a pile near the wall. When they were all out, he knelt at the lip of the circle, reached for the handle and, taking a deep breath, pulled hard.
Nothing.
The cap didn’t move.
He tried again. He knew he was much weaker than usual, but the cap wasn’t shifting at all.
He stood up and was halfway to the metalwork room in search of some extra leverage when he changed his mind.
‘Idiot,’ he said to himself, and ran back. Once more he knelt at the edge of the disc, leaned over, put both hands on the handle and twisted.
It moved.
‘Got it!’ he shouted. Millimetre by millimetre, working it first clockwise then anti-clockwise, he started to rotate the well-cap. It was becoming looser all the time, each movement making it screech as the thread of the cap released itself from the thread of the plate. Slowly the cap edged up – Itch worked his hands round and round, moving one over the other, twisting and pulling. It now sat a few centimetres above the plate, and Itch straightened his back. He wanted to be ready for the moment it came free – he didn’t want to lose his balance now.
One more revolution.
Two more.
A third, and then suddenly there was more movement and the cap came free and shifted sideways. A horrible stench, filthy and dark, hit him like a punch in the face. He gagged and turned his head away, his eyes shut. Inch by inch he pulled the cap from the hole, the steel scraping noisily but eventually crunching down onto the metal plate.
Itch backed away from the hole. The smell of rotting vegetation rose like a gas and filled his nostrils, the hall, the corridor, and probably the whole school. Sitting back now, he could actually see the air above the hole shimmer and move. He half expected the ghost of the winchman or the nun to appear.
Slowly he edged towards the hole again, his heart pounding, his head thumping, and looked over the edge. He could see only darkness – what light there was in the corridor certainly didn’t penetrate more than the first few centimetres of the well. He realized he was holding his breath, but the smell had now changed to something more like cooked cabbage and sewage. It was hideous, but he could tolerate it. The train carriage with its crushed stinky beans had been a good rehearsal.
Retrieving two of the screws, he dropped them down the well. One by one they disappeared. He waited for a splash but heard nothing. He needed something bigger, and found a one-kilogram brass weight in the metalwork room. Holding it dead centre of the hole, he let go. It disappeared into the blackness and Itch waited. How long to fall 400 feet? Only a few seconds. Silence.
Sitting back by the notice board, Itch wasn’t sure what he had expected; that the water would be lapping at the top of the well? He hadn’t actually thought beyond finding the well and then throwing the rucksack, rocks and all, down into the depths. He could still do that – but what if they got stuck halfway, what then? No, he knew he needed to put them out of reach for ever. If criminals, terrorists and governments were as desperate to get hold of them as Cake and Alexander had claimed, climbing a few metres down a hole wouldn’t deter anyone.
Slowly the reality of what he faced began to dawn on him. Exhausted, bloodied and weak with radiation poisoning, he was going to have to climb down into the well. He didn’t know how deep he would have to go in order to ensure that the rocks disappeared, but he was going to have to try. Wearily he dragged himself to his feet, and tried not to think about the last time anyone had gone down this well. Images of men scrambling for their lives came to his mind.
Back in the metalwork room, he searched for a light. Even the diggers of the nineteenth century had candlelight. The forge and the blowtorches would be gas-powered, and in the cupboards behind the teacher’s desk he found what he needed: four canisters of camping gas, three red ones with ‘47kg’ on the side, and one small, grey, tennis-ball-tube-sized one. An old cigarette lighter was lodged in the top of one of the red containers, and behind them lay a tangled pile of tubes and blowtorches.
It took him ten precious minutes to pull everything over to the hole and attach the canisters, tubing and blowtorches together. He put the small canister in a side pocket of the rucksack and arranged the big ones at regular intervals around the hole. Turning on the gas from the first one, he sparked the lighter. An orange and blue flame from the blowtorch filled the corridor with a flickering, dancing light. Pausing briefly, realizing he should have at least considered the possibility that there were flammable gases in the room, he lowered the flame into the hole.
The rubber tubing took the swaying flame a metre below the surface, and Itch lay flat, his hands on either side of the hole. He looked down again. The metre-diameter hole in the plate sat on a two-metre-diameter well, and as Itch lowered his head he could see the bricks that walled the shaft. Some were cracked and crumbling, and most were lined with moss, but it looked solid – and drier than he had expected. As he turned his head around the circumference of the well, he tried to guide the light of the flame to where he was looking. He strained his neck to look under where he was lying and he saw the one thing that he had hoped for and dreaded in equal measure.
There was a narrow metal ladder that started just below the lip of the well and disappeared into the depths. By the swaying gas light, Itch’s eyes followed it down about five metres before it disappeared. It looked solid enough, but who was to say it wouldn’t collapse with the first foot that touched a rung? Again he thought of just throwing the rucksack down the hole, closing the well-cap and getting to a hospital. But no matter how often he told himself that 400 feet would be plenty deep enough, a voice in his head came back with 1,285 feet. That’s why he was here. The deepest well: that was the point.
He had decided. He was going down.
‘Last-minute shopping,’ said Itch, and he switched off the gas. He then ran back to grab some of the short lengths of wood from the woodwork room. Thirty seconds later they were dropped down the well, disappearing noiselessly like the brass weight and the screws before them. Next he found a towel by the sinks in the science lab. As he stuffed it down his shirt, his attention was caught, as it so often had been, by the array of chemicals in jars and bottles in the glass-fronted cabinet behind the teacher’s desk. On the top shelf stood a thick, clear-glass bottle. The label said Na, but Itch already knew what it was from the soft, silvery chunks that lay submerged in a clear oil. It was sodium – one of the most explosive metals, which was why it was kept under oil. If it was exposed to the air for more than a few seconds, it would start to react, fizzing and turning pink. In lessons, teachers always used a disappointingly small slice of sodium to illustrate their experiment, dropping the sliver into water with a ‘pop’ as the hydrogen gas caught fire.
‘Guess I might need all of it,’ said Itch, and he opened the cupboard. He picked up the jar, made sure the top was secure and hurried back to the well.
Itch didn’t stop now. He knew if he did he might just have second thoughts and back out. He checked the positioning of the gas canisters and tubes, the blowtorches dangling over the edge. He then put the sodium jar in the rucksack front pocket, where the tubes of WHO ME and SBM were still wrapped in foil, and hoisted it all onto his back. Checking the lighter was in his trouser pocket, Itch walked to the edge of the well.
His head swam and he started to shake again. He coul
d no longer tell where the terror ended and the radiation poisoning started. He walked round the well till he was opposite the ladder and sat down, swinging his legs over the edge. Over the abyss, he thought. He lit one of the blowtorches again, and lowered it down into the hole. He waited till it had stopped swaying and checked the other two large gas canisters. Their tubes hung down on the other side, and he turned on the taps, releasing their gas, unlit, into the well.
‘Wish me luck!’ he called to no one in particular, but maybe to the ghosts of the well or the statue of Mary. Or maybe just because it felt good to shout. Lying face down with his feet over the well opening, he shuffled and wriggled his body closer to the drop. His legs slid into space and he started kicking and swinging until they found the ladder. He walked his feet down the rungs, testing their strength. Satisfied, he eased himself below the surface.
For a moment Itch froze, staring at the bricks and mould that surrounded him. The smell of gas reminded him to reach for the lighter and, stretching up but looking down, he lit one of the gas-emitting blowtorches. All the gas which had flowed into the well ignited in a ball of flame. Itch heard his hair sizzle but kept his eyes looking down. The brilliant flash lit the walls properly for the first time, and momentarily he saw the planks of wood he had thrown down, tiny, distant and splayed in a rose pattern hundreds of feet below. The familiar smell of his burned hair stayed with him for only a second.
The illumination of the fiery gas ball was brief, but the three burning torches provided Itch with a steady light to start his descent. He was at the top of a ladder that disappeared into the darkness below. He didn’t know how far it would take him, but slowly, rung by rung, he climbed down into the unknown.
29
FOUR HUNDRED FEET; THIRTY feet; 885 feet. Down, across and down again: 1,285 feet. That’s all he knew – that’s how Watkins had taught it. He would keep going deeper till he found water, or couldn’t go any further.