The Stone Book Quartet (11 page)

He went into the empty shop. The bell tinkled on its curled spring.

At the back of the shop there was a yard door that slid in grooves. William could open it with one finger, because Grandad had made a lead counterweight and hung it by a sashcord, so that the door was balanced. Behind the big green door was the farrier’s yard, where horses used to be shod, and from the yard broad steps went down to Grandad’s cellar and forge and the flat, square cobbles.

It was for ever dark at the forge. Light came from the grating and made silhouettes of all the heavy gear; the hoists, the tackle, the presses, the anvils and the skirt of the forge hood.

Coals burned dull red. Under the grating was the bench where Grandad sat. He was the whitesmith and lock smith, and blacksmith, too.

His crucible stood in a firebrick bed, full of solder. His irons were by him, some so big that lifting them made William’s wrists ache. But he had seen Grandad take them, and heat them, and when they were hot, Grandad spat on them; and the spit danced, and he ran his thumb along the end to test the heat.

And then he took metal and did wonderful things; turning, twisting, tapping, shaping, dabbing and making; quickly, before the metals were cold. Brew-cans, billy cans, milk-cans, and the great churns that stood at the roadside. He could make them all. And he could make brass fenders straight, and take the dents from tin, and put back the fragile lion-masks on coal scuttles.

‘I’ve a month’s mind to tan your hide,’ said Grandad. ‘What were you standing out there for, fair starved, and the siren blahting?’

‘It’s a false alarm,’ said William. ‘Or snow got into it.’

‘And what if somebody doesn’t tell Gerry one of these days, and he finds you gawping up at him?’ said Grandad.

‘That’s what I’ve come for,’ said William. ‘We have to have our names written in indelible on all our clothes, and Mum says can you stamp mine on me clogs, please?’

Grandad put his tools down and looked at William.

William swung his gas mask tin off his shoulder and sat on it.

‘And what’s the indelible in aid of?’ said Grandad.

‘We were told in prayers. We’ve to be ready for inspection on Monday, or else.’

‘l see,’ said Grandad. ‘And what are you doing clagged up so you can’t hardly walk?’

‘I keep stopping to scrawk it off,’ said William.

‘Come here,’ said Grandad. ‘I don’t know. What do they learn you these days?’

William leant against the bench and Grandad put a clog between his knees, with his back to William, as if he was shoeing a horse, and knocked the snow off with a hammer.

‘Hold still,’ he said, and he reached over to where his metal punches stood in their rack in order of the alphabet, and very deftly he took each as he needed it, placed the letter against the sole of William’s clog and tapped it. The punch left a clean print in the wood. And he dropped the punch back in the rack, and took another.

Grandad finished William’s name on one clog, and swapped legs.

‘I reckon,’ said Grandad, ‘that in fifty-five years of setting labels on milk-cans for farmers, I must’ve come near writing a book with these. And now I’m stamping you up so as we can go looking for what’s left of you next time you gawp at bombers. I don’t know. I really do not know. Hold still, will you?’

He dipped a worn paint brush into a tin and daubed something stiff and smooth over the soles of William’s clogs. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’ll keep the snow off. But mind how you treat your Mother’s rugs, or she’ll play the dickens with the both of us.’

‘What is it?’ said William.

‘Axle grease.’

William sat down by the forge again. ‘Can you do anything for the leathers?’ he said. ‘They’re that stiff all the time, I have to warm them to take them off. They’re crippling me.’

‘Worse could happen,’ said Grandad. ‘Bad shoes have saved my life.’

‘How?’ said William.

‘In Kaiser Bill’s war,’ said Grandad. ‘I went for me medical, along with all the other youths from this shop; Tommy Latham, David Peters and them. But the army doctor said as how he reckoned they could manage without me. He said, “You’ve hammer toes.” And I said, “What do you expect? I’m a smith!” But it was a terrible rough auction, was Kaiser Bill’s war. Men were going thick and threefold. Like water down a ditch.

‘They’re all on the Memorial at Saint Philip’s. George Powell, Oliver Leah, the Burgesses; Fred, Jim, Percy, Reg. And me own half-brother, Charlie. He’s there. And he was the one me Mother reared. For that.’

The forge was low, but warm enough to chill William’s clothes with melting.

The all-clear sounded. William and Grandad looked through the window, criss-crossed with strips of brown paper against blast. The blizzard had stopped.

‘I brought these down from up home this morning,’ said Grandad.

He went to a row of vices clamped to a bench. In the vices were two strips of iron, about six feet long, and bevelled on one side. Grandad had drilled holes in each strip and countersunk them.

‘Get on the bellows, youth,’ he said.

William began to work the lever handle of the forge bellows up and down. It was as though the cellar was waking, breathing. The coals glowed more brightly, and blue gasses licked around them.

Up and down, up and down. The warmth came back.

‘Steady,’ said Grandad. ‘We’re not the Queen Elizabeth, nor Chapel organ, neither. Steady. Keep her going gentle.’

He held an end of one of the strips in the forge. When the end was cherry red he lifted it over to his swage block.

In all Grandad’s forge and cellar there was nothing like the swage block. It was a square, thick slab, too heavy for William even to move, but Grandad could move it. Its edges were indented, but each indentation was a different size, a different shape. They were slots, for bevels or angles. And the block itself was pierced by squares and circles, so that the weight looked light, and in one corner was a hollow, a circular dish when the block lay that way.

It was a shape older than anvils.

Yet it was only a block of iron, to be used any side up, for anything that was useful.

Grandad put the hot end into a hole in the swage block, and pulled down until the strip began to bend. He drew it out a short way, and bent it again. The metal was losing its colour.

‘Now,’ said Grandad. ‘Give her a good un! Come on! Queen Elizabeth, Chapel and all!’

The lever went up and down, and William with it.

The forge roared. Grandad held the strip with long pincers and paddled it in the fire. He kept looking at the bellows handle, as if he was measuring it, but most of the time he was watching the heated iron.

‘You’ll often wonder why a smith works in the dark,’ he said, ‘and here’s why. It’s nothing dubious. You can’t judge colour if the sun’s putting your fire out. It’s pale straw we’re after; pale straw, and not a touch lighter. See!’

He pulled out the strip. Where he had bent it in the swage block was yellow but not white. He moved quickly now and turned the rough bend in the hollow cup, pressing but not forcing the softened iron to the perfect curve, so that the cup in the block gave its shape to his hand. Then he laid the strip aside. It changed from straw to cherry.

‘We’ll not need to quench it,’ he said. l Grandad took the second strip and did the same to that as he had done to the first, until the two were side by side, identical.

‘Leave her now,’ he said to William. ‘She’ll do.’

The fire receded. Grandad flicked the swage block clean with the end of his leather brat, and wiped his face. He sat with William by the forge and drew two cups of beer from the barrel he kept under his bench.

William drank, and watched.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Grandad. ‘When I was a young youth, and wed, we had the Boer war. And I was playing E Flat cornet for the Temperance Band. And every time we killed two Boers we had us a carnival. Well, there came this night when we’d killed three, and didn’t we celebrate! Charlie and me, we were that fresh we had to play leaning against the wall. And Ollie Leah was sat on the floor there, out in the middle of the road. He played the big drum, and they said as he was the only one to keep time sat down. I suppose there’s a Memorial to them Boers somewhere, if we only knew. But there was no wireless, you see.

‘Now in Kaiser Bill’s war we were working all hours on horse shoes. And that was on top of the regular jobs. I shifted fifteen ton of shoe iron myself. And fifteen ton is thirty-three thousand six hundred shoes. Eight thousand four hundred horses. It took us all our time.’

Grandad threw the last drops of beer into the fire, and wiped his moustache. He bounced the two strips against the palm of his hand. They were cool. He pulled the bellows handle down and laid each strip along the wood. The iron was a perfect fit, lying close, and curving with the end.

Grandad pushed the handle up once and pulled it down again. The bellows breathed and the fire brightened. Grandad stood up and unbolted the handle. He took the long wood to the bench, laid it carefully, and bent to examine the grain. Then he took a chisel and held it to the wood, and he hit the chisel with a hammer. There was a sound like muslin tearing, and the handle ripped, split apart down its length, clean as if a saw had done it.

‘That’s a good bit of ash,’ said Grandad. ‘I thought it was, the first day I set eyes on it.’

‘But what are you doing?’ said William.

‘Doing? I’ve done.’

Grandad and William stood in the cellar. Light was going from window and fire.

‘Fifty-five years,’ said Grandad. ‘I reckon it’s best left now. Did you not know it was me last day?’

William shook his head.

‘Come on,’ said Grandad. ‘We’ve a job to finish.’

He went to his bench. His irons and punches were ready for work. Everywhere was clean in the dirt. He untied his brat from round his waist, used it to flick the anvils, the vices, the bench and the swage block of dust, and hung it on a nail. His hand touched everything once.

‘She’ll do,’ said Grandad.

Grandad and William went out of the cellar up the steps to the farrier’s yard. Grandad’s bicycle was in the yard. He tied the iron and the split handle onto the frame, put on his cap and his trouser clips, wheeled the bicycle into the street, and locked the door.

‘There,’ he said. He gave William the key. It was so worn that the teeth were smooth, the whole key thin from wearing out pockets.

‘It was me first prentice piece. I cut a new one just before the sirens went. That’s a lifetime for you.

William held the key. It was metal like a pebble from the brook. Every part was soft and rounded, without edges. He wrapped it in his handkerchief, so that the shrapnel wouldn’t scratch it.

Grandad switched on his front and rear lamps, and mounted the bicycle.

‘Jump up,’ he said, ‘and we’ll go home and make ourselves some tea.’

William sat on the carrier over the back mudguard. He had one arm around Grandad and the other over the bellows handle.

Grandad pushed off and began his ride home. He always went at the same pace, steadily, ignoring hills.

‘Hold still,’ he said, ‘else you’ll have us in the ditch.’

But it was hard. The carrier was sharp, the wind cold, and there was nowhere for William’s feet. He had to let them hang wide of the wheel. The tyres swished on the packed snow. His face was in Grandad’s coat, and he could feel the movement of pedalling through the heavy folds. The leather saddle squeaked and its springs copied the road.

‘Near enough,’ said Grandad, ‘with it being a measured mile, and allowing four trips a day until I lost your Grandma, and two a day since, what with not coming home for dinner, I calculate I’ve biked this road for work equivalent to two and a half times round the world at the equator.’

It was night when they reached home, but the snow reflected the rising moon on the thatch and the whitewashed walls.

Grandad put his bicycle in the coalshed and shovelled a bucket of coal to last the evening. They went into the house and hung the blackout curtains over the windows before they lit the lamps. Grandad poked the fire. He had banked it up with slack before going to work, and the coaldust was glowing under the dead surface.

‘I’ll put the kettle on and wash me,’ said Grandad, ‘while you go and fetch some spuds in.’

William took a basket from the kitchen and went to the garden.

The potatoes had been hogged for the winter. The hogg was a shallow pit, big as a room, and the potatoes were stacked in it, pitched like a roof to throw the rain off, covered with soil and bracken to keep out the cold.

William pulled the bracken away from the hogg where it had been opened, filled the basket, and covered the hogg again.

When he was back inside the house he took off his balaclava and mittens and put them on the fender to dry.

Grandad was washing his hands in a tin basin. William turned on the tap over the slopstone. ‘Get the muck off and leave the jackets,’ said Grandad. ‘We’ll have them in the oven.’

William tugged the earth away in frozen lumps. ‘There’s a yard of frost out there,’ he said. ‘Grandad?’

‘What if somebody shouts Tom Fobble’s Day on you and it’s not for marbles and you’re not after Easter?’

‘Is he bigger than you?’ said Grandad.

‘Yes.’

‘Then run like beggary.’

‘It’s Stewart Allman,’ said William. ‘He took me sledge and wrecked it.’

‘And good riddance,’ said Grandad. ‘I never saw such a codge.’

Grandad wiped his hands on the harsh towel. William held the potatoes under the tap. A ball of earth came away solid. He broke it open in his hands.

‘Eh up!’ said Grandad.

The earth was like a split rock. In the middle of the black ball, clean, white, shining, was a clay pipe. The pipe was decorated in fluted lines, and was undamaged.

William laid the earth gently on the slopstone and let the water trickle from the tap. He took a piece of shrapnel out of his pocket and used its jagged point to help the earth loose.

‘Let’s have a look,’ said Grandad.

‘Wait. Don’t touch,’ said William. Grandad’s hands had reached to feel the pipe, but they were now too big; they were too clumsy for the job.