The Stone Book Quartet (13 page)

He put down his heels and stopped at the hedge.

Stewart Allman arrived.

‘Any bones broken?’ he said.

‘No,’ said William.

‘We thought you’d be killed.’

‘Get off with you!’ said William. ‘It’s dead safe. Me Grandad made it.’

‘Will you go again?’ said Stewart Allman. ‘From the top.’

‘It’s a heck of a climb,’ said William.

‘I’d give you a pull to half way,’ said Stewart Allman.

‘What about your sledge?’

‘It’s no weight. Honest. Will you?’

‘OK.’

Stewart Allman took both sledges and floundered up the field. William dusted off the snow powder that had sprayed over him in a plume.

‘He’s going again!’ said Stewart Allman when they reached the others. ‘Stand back!’

He handed over the rope to William, and William went on alone.

‘I was going to, anyway,’ he said when he was at the top.

He set off. It had not been imagined. He was not alone on a sledge. There was a line, and he could feel it. It was a line through hand and eye, block, forge and loom to the hill. He owned them all: and they owned him.

‘Good-lad-Dick,’ said Stewart Allman after the second run, but he didn’t offer to pull the sledge, and the others had lost interest. William shouted whenever he was ready to go from the top, and the way was left clear; but that was all.

The Dorniers came in from the east and the Heinkels flew overhead. The search-lights swivelled around the sky, but never saw anything, and the guns began to fire. William watched from the top of the field.

A battery of guns opened up, the flash and then the noise. Everybody stopped sledging when the shrapnel began to fall. It was easier to find on Lizzie Leah’s than it was in the village. The fragments zipped and fizzed into the snow. William collected until his pockets were full. He needn’t have swapped his incendiary. He had more shrapnel than he could keep.

The others soon began sledging again.

They were having pack races to the gate. If everybody arrived at the same time it was a calamity. If someone got there first but lost control, he had to escape from his own crash before he was hit by the rest.

William pushed off from the top when he heard Stewart Allman shout, ‘On your marks!’ At ‘Get set!’ he was lying back. By ‘Go!’ he was coming down at thirty miles an hour, the spray from his heels hitting his face like freezing sand. He curved round the pack on a new course, and cut in to beat them to the hump. The moment in the air was worth any climb.

He found he could leave at ‘Get set!’ and still have the freedom of the gate. To wait until ‘Go!’ was dangerous.

William was holding on his heels for the next run when he saw how like bombers the pack were in their tight group. He started off. They had opened formation by the time he reached them.

He came in on the bombers from above and out of the sun. Two crossed his sights and he gave them a burst. They went down together. Another tried to dodge him, and crashed. He raced through the pack and settled on the leader’s tail. The leader climbed hard at the hump, but William caught his fusilage with a runner and the leader spun out of control and hit the tree.

William landed. The leader was struggling in a thorn hedge. ‘You’re flaming crackers, you are!’ said Stewart Allman.

‘Look what you’ve done!’

The field really was littered. The sledge had sent the pack careering all ends up.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ said William. ‘I was a Spitfire.’

‘He was only being a Spitfire!’ Stewart Allman shouted. He limped over to the dump and dropped his broken sledge. ‘And I’ve got a sprained Heinkel.’

‘I didn’t mean it,’ said William.

‘Come on, you daft oddment,’ said Stewart Allman.

‘We were packing in now, anyroad. That shrapnel’s brogged the snow. It’s busting the sledges.’

‘Mine’s all right,’ said William.

‘Well, ours aren’t,’ said Stewart Allman. ‘But play again tomorrow, when it’s snowed.’

‘Play again,’ said William. ‘l told you that black cloud was snow.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Stewart Allman.

‘It was!’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘It snowed a blizzard!’ said William.

‘Yes, but that wasn’t the cloud.’

‘Where did the blizzard come from, then?’

‘Out of the sky,’ said Stewart Allman. ‘The white bits.’

‘But the cloud went at the same time as the blizzard,’ said William.

‘That’s why,’ said Stewart Allman. ‘There was a wind in the cloud, and it blew the snow away. Now there’s a proper snow cloud for you.’

He pointed to the north. The moon shone on billows, reflecting light. ‘See, clever-clogs?’

‘Play again,’ said William.

‘Play again.’

William set off for home. The guns were still firing. Stewart Allman had been right. It was going to snow.

He came to Grandad’s house. There was a bicycle propped against the wall. The Air Raid warden often called for a cup of tea if it wasn’t too late in the night.

The sledge runners had taken such a polish that the sledge kept banging William’s ankles; so when he stopped he had to swing the rope past him in an arc.

There was more than one bicycle. There were several, against the wall under the thatch. William pulled the sledge up the path and lodged it by the door. He opened the door, went in and closed it, and drew the blackout curtain aside.

The room was empty, but the lamp was lit. There were too many unexpected smells: facepowder, whisky, cigarette smoke. But the room was empty. William listened. He felt and heard the house heavy above him. Nobody was talking, but there was a weight in the room overhead.

Lamplight and shadow were on the bent stairs. William climbed up until he could see.

The bedroom was thatched rafters down to the floor, and it was full of people, still wearing their coats, and standing, pressed by the roof, around Grandad’s bed.

William worked between the gathered legs towards the bed.

Voices were whispering, and he was sure he knew the people, but now they were figures darkening him.

He moved a coat hem, and looked straight into Grandad’s eyes. The blue eyes and the sharp nose. There was such a clearness in the eyes that William felt that they were speaking to him. Of all the people crowded there, Grandad looked only at William. He must be speaking to him.

‘Grandad.’

The eyes answered with their fierce blue.

‘Grandad, I’ve been up Lizzie Leah’s, and it’s a belter. The irons have got a right polish on them now.’ Someone turned against William as he was kneeling. Grandad sighed, or spoke. ‘What, Grandad?’

The fierce, kind eyes were still urgent, but that small movement had taken William out of their sight. They were looking at what was before them, at nothing more.

William pushed away from the bed. The coats fell like a curtain. He went backwards to the stairs, and down.

It was a big room. He had never known it empty. William stood in the room and listened to the weight in the house up-ended. All in the bedroom, no one below. The table cleared, but with sawdust in the cracks.

William stood at the chimney. He saw the corner cupboard, the chair.

He spilled the shrapnel across the floor, and when he was rid of it and had only the key in the pocket, the pipe in the tin, he reached into the darkness, and closed his hands.

‘Tom Fobble’s Day!’

William held the two gleaming horseshoes.

‘No back bargains!’

He ran from the house. The horseshoes pulled his jacket out of shape, but their weight was light as he ran with his sledge to the top of Lizzie Leah’s.

The line did hold. Through hand and eye, block, forge and loom to the hill and all that he owned, he sledged sledged sledged for the black and glittering night and the sky flying on fire and the expectation of snow.