‘But have you?’
‘Wait a year.’
‘I’m fretted with stone picking,’ said Mary. ‘I want to live in a grand house, and look after every kind of beautiful thing you can think of: old things: brass.’
‘By God, you’ll find stone picking’s easier!’ The onion dropped off Father’s knife and thumb and floated down to the lawns of the church. It had so far to fall that there was time for it to wander in the air.
‘We’d best fetch that,’ said Father, ‘The vicar won’t have us untidy.’
He put Mary on the ladder and climbed outside her. Just as the sky and the steeple were inside the ladder, Mary was inside Father’s long arms that pushed him out from the rungs. He didn’t help her, but she felt free and safe and climbed as if there was no sky, no stone, no height.
She ran across the lawn and picked up the onion. Bits of it had smashed off and she nibbled them.
She stood with Father and looked up. The spire still toppled under the clouds.
‘She’ll do,’ said Father, and slapped the stone. ‘Yet she’ll never do.’
‘Why?’ said Mary.
‘She’s no church, and she’ll not be. You want a few dead uns against the wall for it to be a church.’
‘They’ll come.’
‘Not here,’ said Father. ‘There’s to be no burial ground. Just grass. And without you’ve some dead uns, it’s more like Chapel than Church. Empty.’
He ate his onion.
Mary went back to work. She looked at Saint Philip’s when she got to Lifeless Moss. Father was nearly at the top again. His arms were straight. He climbed balanced out from the stone.
She dipped a panshon of water in the spring and took some up to Mother. Mother was sleeping, but her hair was flat with sweat.
Old William was sweating at his loom. It was all clack. He had to watch the threads, and he couldn’t look to talk.
Mary worked till the sun was cool, then she carried her stones home and made the tea. She washed little Esther and put her to bed, and gave Mother her tea. Father came home.
‘That’s done,’ he said. He sat quietly in his chair. He was always quiet when the work was over, church or wall or garden.
After tea, Father went to see Mother. They talked, and he played his ophicleide to her. He played gentle tunes, not the ones for Sunday.
Mary cleared the table and washed the dishes. And when she’d finished she cleaned the stones from the field. Old William smoked half a pipe of tobacco before going back to the loom.
‘Is he playing?’ said Old William.
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘But not Chapel. Why are we Chapel?’
‘You’d better ask him,’ said Old William. ‘I’m Chapel because it’s near. I do enough walking, without Sunday.’
Father came down from playing his music. He sat at the table with Mary and sorted the stones she had picked that day with little Esther. Most pickers left their stones on the dump at the field end, but Mary brought the best of hers home and cleaned the dirt off, and Father looked at them. In the field they were dull and heavy, and could break a scythe; but on the table each one was something different. They were different colours and different shapes, different in size and feel and weight. They were all smooth cobbles.
‘Why are we Chapel?’ said Mary.
‘We’re buried Church,’ said Father.
‘But why?’
‘There’s more call on music in Chapel,’ said Father.
‘Why?’
‘Because people aren’t content with raunging theirselves to death from Monday to Saturday, but they must go bawling and praying and fasting on Sundays too.’
‘What’s the difference between Church and Chapel?’ said Mary.
‘Church is Lord Stanley.’
‘Is that all?’
‘It’s enough,’ said Father. ‘When you cut stone, you see more than the parson does, Church or Chapel.’
‘Same as what?’
‘Same as this.’ Father took a stone and broke it. He broke it cleanly. The inside was green and grey. He took one half and turned so that Mary couldn’t see how he rubbed it. Mary had tried to polish stone, but a whole day of rubbing did no good. It was a stone-cutter’s secret, one of the last taught. Father held the pebble inside his waistcoat, and whatever it was that he did was simple; a way of holding, or twisting. And the pebble 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.’