The Stone Book Quartet. Alan Garner

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      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 I 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, СКАЧАТЬ