Читать книгу The Stone Book Quartet - Alan Garner, Alan Garner - Страница 6

They were flitting the Allmans. Joseph sat at the top of Leah’s Bank and watched.

The horse and cart stood outside the house, by the field gate. Elijah Allman lifted the dollytub onto the cart first and set it in the middle. Then Alice and Amelia climbed into the dollytub, and Elijah packed them round with bedding. Young Herbert was carrying chairs.

The Allmans loaded the cart with furniture, stacking from the girls in the dollytub, so that the load was firm. Mrs Allman came out of the house backwards on her knees. She was donkey-stoning the doorstep white, and when she had done she stood up, and reached over the step and pulled the door to.

Elijah helped her up onto the carter’s seat. Young Herbert sat next to her, holding the reins. Elijah took the bridle and walked the horse through the field gateway, down the Hough and onto the Moss.

Joseph listened to them go. He went to the top corner post of the field, ran three strides and slid down Leah’s Bank. It was such a steep hill, and the grass so hard and slippery, that he could slide for yards at a time, standing. And when the grass was brogged by old cow muck, he had only to keep his balance, skip, and be away again.

He pushed the door open.

The house smelt wet with donkey-stone and limewash. The rooms were enormous empty. All the floors were white, all the walls and beams and the ceilings white. The stairs were sand-scoured, and the boards too. There was no dirt anywhere.

Joseph looked out of the bedroom window. The Allmans were away across the Moss. He left the house and went home for breakfast. He lived at the bottom of the hill.

Grandfather had finished his breakfast and was smoking a pipe of tobacco in his chair by the fire. His hard fingers could press the tobacco down hot in the bowl, without burning himself.

‘They’ve flitted Allmans,’ said Joseph.

‘Ay,’ said Grandfather.

‘What for?’ said Joseph.

‘The years they’ve been there,’ said Grandfather. ‘It’s a wonderful thing, them in their grandeur, and us in raddle and daub.’

‘Why?’ said Joseph.

‘Eat your pobs,’ said Grandmother.

Grandfather knocked the ashes of his pipe out onto his hand and pitched them in the fire. He raised himself. ‘Best be doing,’ he said. ‘Damper Latham’s getting for me. And think on,’ he said to Joseph, ‘I’ll have half an hour from you before school. Is your mother coming up for her dinner today?’

‘And fetching Charlie,’ said Joseph. ‘She promised.’

Grandfather picked up his canvas bass and took his cap off the doornail. The chisels and hammers clinked together in the bass. ‘Be sharp,’ he said to Joseph.

Grandfather was old. But he still turned out. He was building a wall into the hedge bank of Long Croft field, down the road from the house, under the wood.

Joseph washed his basin and spoon at the spring in the garden, and ran down the road to Long Croft.

Grandfather was rough-dressing the stone for the wall, and laying it out along the hedge. Joseph unwound the line and pegged one end in the joints where Grandfather had finished the day before, and pulled the line tight against the bank. His job was to cut the bank back to receive the stone and to run a straight bed for the bottom course.

He chopped at the bank.

‘Sweep up behind you,’ said Grandfather. ‘Muck’s no use on the road. It wants to be on the field.’

Joseph had to throw the clods high over his head to clear the quickthorn hedge.

‘Get your knee aback of your shovel,’ said Grandfather. ‘There’s no sense in mauling yourself half to death. Come on, youth. Shape!’

Joseph chopped, shovelled and threw. Grandfather worked the stone.

‘I don’t know why I bother,’ he said. ‘I’d as lief let it lie. The rubbish they send! I doubt there’s not above a hundred years in it. Watch your line!’

Joseph was sweating. Grandfather took the spade from him and looked along the bank. He walked down the raw cut edge and shaved the earth with light swings of the blade. ‘You’ve got it like a fiddler’s elbow,’ he said.

Damper Latham came with his cart up the road under the wood from Chorley. The cart was heavy and pulled by two Shires. Their brasses glinted. Suns, moons and clovers chimed on their leathers. Damper Latham kept his horses smart as a show.

‘Now then, Robert,’ he said.

Grandfather looked over the side of the cart. ‘What’s all this?’ he said. ‘It’s never stone.’

Damper Latham winked at Joseph. ‘Eh, dear, dear! Robert?’ he said. ‘Has the Missis been sitting on your shirt tail?’

‘Take it away,’ said Grandfather. ‘I’ll not put me name to it.’

Damper Latham let down the boards and the sides of the cart and climbed onto the load. He began to walk the stones to the edge and slide them down two planks to Grandfather.

‘You’ll take what you’re given, Robert,’ he said. ‘Else go without. I’ve had a job for to get these.’

Grandfather grunted, and swung the blocks to lie as he wanted. They seemed to move without more than his hand on them.

Joseph tried to help, but he couldn’t even pull the weight from the slope of the plank. He pulled and shoved, and the block shifted its balance and came at him. He couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t put it down and it was fighting him. He twisted away, but he still couldn’t let go. The living dead weight of it all gripped his hands and wrenched his shoulders. Then it fell clear and smashed on the road.

‘You great nowt!’ shouted Grandfather. ‘See at what you’ve done!’

Joseph ran up the plank to the cart.

‘See at it!’ shouted Grandfather. ‘I can’t use that! I’m not a man with string round his britches!’

The chapel clock struck eight.

‘There’s not better to be got, Robert,’ said Damper Latham.

‘Well, I’ll not abide it,’ said Grandfather.

‘Must I go fetch you a load from Leah’s Bank?’ said Damper Latham.

‘No!’

‘Where’s stone on Leah’s Bank?’ said Joseph.

‘It’s eight o’clock,’ said Grandfather. ‘Time you were off.’

‘Stay and give us a tune,’ said Damper Latham. ‘I’m going down the village. You can have a ride.’

‘He’ll be late,’ said Grandfather.

‘He’ll not,’ said Damper Latham. ‘The E-Flat’s under me coat there.’

Joseph picked up the bright cornet from beneath the seat and set his tongue to the mouthpiece and loosened the valves with his fingers.

‘What must I play?’ he said.

‘Give us a Methody hymn for to fetch this load off,’ said Damper Latham. ‘One with a swing.’

Joseph played ‘Man Frail and God Eternal’ twice. Grandfather and Damper Latham worked together, as they had always done. The stone moved lightly for them.

‘The busy tribes of flesh and blood, with all their lives and cares,’ sang Damper Latham, ‘are carried downwards by the flood, and lost in following years.’

‘Couldn’t wait,’ said Grandfather. ‘One week to flit. Out.’

‘Where’ve they gone?’ said Damper Latham.

‘The Moss,’ said Grandfather.

‘Give us a swing, youth!’ Damper Latham nudged Joseph. Joseph had stopped playing.

‘Let’s have some Temperance,’ said Grandfather.

So Joseph played ‘Dip your Roll in your own Pot at Home’.

‘How’s Elijah?’ said Damper Latham.

‘Badly,’ said Grandfather. ‘Them as can’t bend, like as not they break.’

‘Eh,’ said Damper Latham, and he looked both ways on the road before he spoke. ‘Is it true what it’s for? A kitchen garden?’

‘True? It’s true!’ said Grandfather. ‘Kitchen garden! Rector’s wife must grow herself a vine and a twothree figs, seemingly. She caught a dose of religion, that one; and there’s Allmans out. Hey!’

Joseph was looking at his own stretched face in the swell of the cornet. Someone must have taken the brass and shaped it and turned it, with valves for every note, tapping, drawing it to soprano E-Flat.

‘Hey! Let’s hear “Ode to Drink”. This lot wants some raunging.’ The cart shook as Grandfather pulled at the base of the stack.

Joseph sucked for spit, but his mouth had dried.

Grandfather and Damper Latham began without him, and he had to catch up when his lips were wet.

‘Let thy devotee extol thee,

And thy wondrous virtues sum;

But the worst of names I’ll call thee,

O thou hydra monster Rum!’

The stones thumped off.

‘Pimple-maker, visage-bloater,

Health-corrupter, idler’s mate;

Mischief-breeder, vice-promoter,

Credit-spoiler, devil’s bait!’

Damper Latham swept the cart with his broom, and danced and marched to Joseph’s music. Grandfather had his chisels out and was hitting the notes on them with his hammer, like a xylophone.

‘Utterance-boggler, stench-emitter,

Strong-man sprawler, fatal drop;

Tumult-raiser, venom-spitter,

Wrap-inspirer, coward’s prop!’

Joseph had stopped playing. His neck hurt for thought of the Allmans. He couldn’t swallow. But Grandfather and Damper Latham went on, singing louder and louder, tenor and bass, by turns.

Joseph shut his eyes.

‘Virtue-blaster, base deceiver!

Spite-displayer, sot’s delight!

Noise-exciter, stomach-heaver!

Falsehood-spreader! Scorpion’s bite!’

Grandfather and Damper Latham were laughing too much to work.

Joseph opened his eyes. He was looking straight into Grandfather’s, and they were hard, fierce, kind and blue.

‘That’s it, youth,’ said Grandfather. ‘Strike or laugh. You’ll learn.’