No Stone Unturned

by Helen Watts

  It was Sunday morning, and Kelly had just finished her morning chores. She had been helping her mum to wash all the lace curtains, which had to be done outside by hand as they were so delicate, and she was now pegging them out on the washing line to dry. It was a perfect day for the job, as the sun was shining and there was a warm, gentle breeze. The curtains would be fresh and dry and back up at the windows in no time.

  Tyson, whose lead was looped around the washing line pole, was watching Kelly avidly, yet every now and then he was unable to resist the urge to jump up and snap at a passing fly. As Kelly bent down to take the last curtain from the washing basket, Tyson caught her eye and wagged his tail hopefully, knowing that it was almost time for his walk.

  Kelly decided to take him down the road into Wilmcote to the village shop where she planned to buy her favourite magazine.

  ‘You can have a run in the playing field after. As long as there are no dogs about,’ she whispered to Tyson, as she put him on his lead.

  The two of them set off down the lane that led to the main road into the village. About a quarter of a mile on, the road crossed first the railway and then the canal. The village centre, with its small green, shop and pub, the Mary Arden Inn, was straight ahead, but when she reached the kissing gate that led onto the canal-side, Kelly automatically turned and headed down the slope onto the towpath. She was about a hundred metres along before she realised what she had done.

  ‘Oh!’ She stopped in her tracks, looking down at Tyson by her side. ‘I didn’t mean to come this way. I wanted to go to the shop. Must be force of habit, from last time we came.’

  Tyson was panting happily, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. He looked like he was smiling.

  ‘You little monkey. You didn’t stop me, did you? I reckon you wanted to come this way. Oh well, we might as well carry on now. We can cross the canal at the next bridge and circle round into the village from that direction. I’ll pick up my magazine on the way back.’

  They carried on. Tyson was pulling at the lead, desperate to charge at three fat little ducks sitting on the grass at the side of the water. ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Kelly, reining him in. ‘Not today. After what happened last time, I’m keeping you on a lead. It’s your own silly fault!’

  After a few minutes, they reached the spot where the footpath from the village crossed the towpath and went on over the railway bridge. Kelly glanced to her left towards the footbridge, and noticed a boy standing exactly where Kelly had when she had been calling to Tyson.

  The boy was staring down at the track, but he must have sensed Kelly’s presence, because he turned his face towards her and smiled. Kelly half nodded and raised her hand to acknowledge him. She was about to turn right to carry on towards the village when Tyson, who had been sniffing around at the base of a tree, suddenly noticed the boy too, and nearly yanked Kelly’s arm out of its socket in an effort to reach him.

  ‘Tyson!’ Kelly cried. ‘Don’t pull me like that!’

  But Tyson seemed desperate to get to the stranger and, equally desperate not to let go of the lead, Kelly had to let the little dog drag her along the path and up onto the bridge.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she panted, as Tyson put his front paws up on the boy’s trousers, leaving two muddy streaks down his knee. ‘I think he just wants to say hello.’

  The boy, who was wearing a dark green checked shirt tucked into his now filthy brown trousers, laughed and bent down to tickle Tyson behind his ears. ‘It’s fine, really. I like dogs. He’s a friendly little chap, isn’t he? What’s his name?’

  ‘Tyson,’ said Kelly. ‘Like the boxer.’ The boy looked blank. This was when Kelly usually had to explain that it was Tyson Fury not Mike Tyson, but as the boy didn’t offer any comment, she quickly moved on. ‘He’s not usually this friendly with strangers. He can be a bit of a fighter.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ the boy said with a laugh, as Tyson sat down in front of him and held up a paw as if wanting to shake hands.

  Kelly thought what a nice face the boy had. He looked friendly and kind, and when he laughed his blue eyes twinkled. That, combined with his fair hair, which flopped softly about his face, gave him an altogether angelic look.

  ‘I’m Kelly, by the way.’

  ‘And I’m B…Ben.’ The boy briefly stumbled over his name.

  Kelly wondered if he had a stutter, so to try to put him at his ease, she made a little joke. ‘Ben and Kelly.’ She laughed. ‘Sounds a bit like Ben and Jerry.’

  Ben looked at her, clearly confused.

  ‘You know, Ben and Jerry’s? The ice cream? I just thought…oh, never mind. Ignore me.’ Ben must think she was bonkers. She quickly changed the subject. ‘I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you local?’

  ‘Yes. My family has a cottage on Stone Pit Farm, out on the other side of the village.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kelly, surprised. ‘It’s funny I’ve not bumped into you before, then. Tyson and I come out walking every day. I think I’ve been past that farm and I come up the canal quite a bit.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t have seen me here before. I’m not supposed to be here, you see. I mean—my mother would go mad if she knew I was anywhere near the railway.’

  ‘Yeah, they’re not the safest places to hang about. I’m with you there,’ snorted Kelly, leaning against the side of the bridge. ‘I nearly lost Tyson here the other day.’ She told Ben all about the rabbit and the boot, and how Tyson had come very close to being hit by a train. ‘I was so relieved to get him back,’ she finished. ‘He climbed back up that embankment just in time.’

  Ben gave Tyson a pat on the head. ‘You’re a clever dog, aren’t you?’ he cooed. ‘You knew exactly what you were doing.’

  ‘So why are you here?’ enquired Kelly, as she looked down at the top of Ben’s head, covered in gentle golden waves.

  ‘I’m waiting for a train.’

  ‘Then you’re in the wrong place.’ Kelly pointed in the direction of the Wilmcote road. ‘The station’s back down there, don’t you know?’

  Ben gave her a sarcastic look. ‘Yes, I know. I’m not daft. No, I mean I’m waiting to see a train.’

  ‘You’re in luck. There’s a steam train that comes though roundabout now on a Sunday. The Shakespeare Express. Should be here any minute.’

  Kelly was happy to stay and watch with Ben. He seemed nice and, although she had heard the whistles of the steam train passing through at the weekend, she had never been there at the right time to see it.

  As they waited, they chatted some more. Ben explained that there was something about trains that fascinated him.

  ‘Is that why you risk getting into trouble to see them?’ asked Kelly.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Kelly sympathised, since her parents could be over-protective too. When she told him that her dad was working on the railway, Ben looked startled.

  ‘What’s he doing? Laying track?’

  ‘No,’ said Kelly, giggling. ‘He’s clearing the embankment. He does landscape work. Tree surgery and all that. He’s clearing the vegetation and overhanging trees along the line up from Stratford-upon-Avon.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Ben. ‘Yes, I suppose it has got a little overgrown, hasn’t it? You know, being the summer and all that.’

  They carried on chatting until they could hear the rumble of the approaching steam train.

  ‘You might want to pick Tyson up,’ Ben advised. ‘The bridge isn’t half going to rattle when it passes underneath. He might get scared and bolt off again.’

  Kelly scooped Tyson up and hugged him close to her chest. She could see the engine coming round the bend now, its grey-white smoke leaving a trail like cotton wool in the air.

  Louder now, and Kelly noticed how white Ben’s fingers were, as he gripped the railing of the bridge. He was obviously holding on tight.

  ‘This is the scary part,’ he shouted, as the noise grew deafeningly loud.

  Seeing them from the cabin
, the engine driver waved and pulled on his whistle, adding to the din. The sheer volume of the noise, and the bone-rattling vibrations, flooded all of Ben and Kelly’s senses and left them whooping and screaming with delight.

  ‘Phew! That was fun,’ said Kelly, falling into step alongside Ben as they set off together along the towpath back towards the main road, with Tyson trotting happily at their heels. She felt so at ease in her new friend’s company that the next few words came out without thinking. ‘You know I said that my parents could be a bit over-protective sometimes? Well, that’s partly because we’re Travellers—’

  She stopped. Why had she said that so soon? It was usually at this moment that people walked away, or remembered something they had to do, somewhere they needed to be. But to her relief, all Ben said was, ‘What do you mean, travellers?’

  Kelly smiled at him. ‘You know, Travellers, with a capital T. Gypsies. Lots of people don’t like us because they don’t understand our way of life. They always jump to the wrong conclusions, so they can be a bit unfriendly sometimes. I think my mum and dad worry that I’ll be exposed to that kind of thing. Prejudice, I mean. So they wrap me up in cotton wool. Well, they try to.’

  ‘Ah yes, some people can be narrow-minded,’ Ben sympathised. ‘I suppose your parents are doing it for the right reasons.’

  He asked Kelly to tell him some more about her family and where she lived and Kelly explained about their caravan and the permanent site they were staying on, just outside the village.

  ‘So how about you?’ she asked, when she had finished. ‘Did you say that you live with your mum and dad?’

  ‘Er, yes.’ Ben paused and seemed to think, before adding, ‘In Stone Pit Cottage. Just me and my mother and father. No one else.’

  ‘So which school do you go to then?’

  ‘Wilmcote.’

  ‘But that’s a primary school! You’re too old to go there.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘I mean, I went to Wilmcote School. Now I just stay at home. My dad thinks you learn more out of school anyway.’

  ‘You’re home educated?’ asked Kelly, surprised. Some of the Traveller parents she knew had chosen to home educate their children as it suited their roaming lifestyle but it was the last thing she had expected Ben to say. He looked so ordinary. Traditional somehow. There was something about his manner, and the way he was dressed. He looked like he came from a pretty conventional family.

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’ Ben stuck out his chin with pride. ‘My mother teaches me everything I need to know.’

  Kelly let out a tiny giggle, forcing a little air from her nose. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that at all,’ she assured her new friend. ‘I just think it’s really funny. Here I am, the Traveller, and I go to school whereas you stay at home. No one can say either of us is conventional!’

  At that, Ben, who had seemed a little prickly over the subject of school, suddenly seemed to relax. He began to ask Kelly about The Shakespeare Academy. He had so many questions about what it was like there, her teachers, how she got there every day and what lessons she had, that Kelly began to wonder if Ben secretly wished he went there himself.

  As they reached the point where the path climbed up the slope to join the main road, Kelly remembered her original plan to go down to the village shop.

  ‘Do you fancy coming to the shop with me?’ she asked, silently hoping that Ben would agree. She was enjoying getting to know him. ‘I’ll buy you an ice cream. Hey, maybe even a pot of Ben and Jerry’s!’

  Ben smiled and hesitated, as if weighing up his options, but to Kelly’s disappointment he announced that he had to get back for Sunday lunch.

  ‘I have to be home on time or I’ll be in trouble,’ he said, already starting to jog away along the towpath. ‘I’d better go this way. It’s shorter than going down the road. I can cross the canal further down and cut across fields back to our cottage.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ Kelly knew her voice sounded a little flat.

  ‘I’ll see you some time in the next few days, I promise,’ shouted Ben, as he picked up his pace.

  ‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ Kelly called back. Then she realised that she didn’t know how to get in touch with him. ‘Wait! Ben!’ she yelled, but he couldn’t hear her. Jogging along the towpath at quite a pace, he had already put too much distance between them.

  Kelly watched his silhouette growing smaller and smaller before finally disappearing from view. Then she looked down at Tyson, who gave a little bark and wagged his tail at her as if to try to cheer her up.

  ‘Come on then, Tyson. Looks like it’s just the two of us for ice cream.’

  PART 2

  Chapter 8 – Summer 1859

  After years of wrangling with the canal company, parliamentary approval was finally forthcoming and, by the summer of 1859, the long-awaited Stratford-upon-Avon to Hatton branch line was under construction.

  For quarry worker William Denton, the new railway meant a fresh start and a new job—a chance to dust off his pit boots and join the ranks of railway construction workers who preferred to spend their days above ground, rather than down in its muddy depths. William’s new job would still involve hard manual labour, but it paid a little more and, away from all the dust, was a little healthier. All that aside, he would do anything to prove to his father-in-law that he was capable of bettering himself, no matter how small a step it was.

  As he walked home in the direction of his cottage on the edge of Stone Pit Farm, William passed the time of day with his three workmates, Ted, Lewis and George, all of whom had changed jobs at the same time as him. Exhausted from their hard day’s work digging out a section of the new railway cutting, they trudged back into Wilmcote. As they skirted around the edge of Stone Pit Farm, their path crossed one of the tramlines which was still being used to move stone from the quarry to the canal.

  ‘That lot’ll move a bit quicker once our job is done,’ remarked Ted, nodding his head in the direction of a horse-drawn truck.

  ‘Ay, it will that,’ replied William. ‘And they don’t let us forget it, do they? If that foreman of ours tells me once more how we’ve got to be all done and dusted by this time next year, I’ll wring his neck.’

  ‘Ah, leave him alone,’ said George, who always tried to see the best in people. ‘He’s only doing his job. The top brass are putting pressure on him because old Mr Greenslade at the quarry is sitting on their backs, and the toffs down there in London are leaning on Greenslade. So we’re all in the same boat. Everyone’s waited a long time for this railway line.’

  Whether or not there was a good reason for driving the construction workers so hard, William found the long days tough to deal with. He was usually good for nothing in the mornings, and he’d been late to work a couple of times already. He was worried that if the foreman kept picking on him, he might lose his job and end up, cap in hand, back at the quarry.

  * * *

  Billy, William’s twelve-year-old son, was familiar with his father’s grumbles. As they sat down that evening to a supper of mutton stew prepared by his mother Alice, Billy listened to William recount his conversation with his friends.

  ‘I’m fed up of that foreman of ours being on our backs every minute of the day,’ he complained. ‘We can’t work any faster. I blame that toffee-nosed Sir Charles. He just wants that line completed so he can have his stone floors done faster. They’ve given him a bloomin’ knighthood and he hasn’t even finished the building yet. Do you know, Lewis said it’s twenty years since Barry came to Wilmcote to visit the quarry? That can’t be right, can it? What’s he building down there, a palace?’

  ‘Actually I think that’s exactly what they are calling it,’ said Alice. ‘I’m sure it’s very grand. And we should give thanks for it. It’s helping to put this food on the table.’ She reached across to take her husband’s hand. ‘Hush now. Let’s say Grace.’

  The instant he finished mumbling ‘Amen’, William resumed his complaining. ‘I heard that Barry is a nightmare to
work for. He has a fit if anything goes wrong. No wonder that chap of his…what was his name? Pullen or something.’

  ‘Pugin,’ Billy chipped in.

  ‘That’s right, Pugin. No wonder he ended up in Bedlam, having to work alongside someone so highly strung. It would drive anyone mad.’

  Billy’s mother sent her husband a look of disapproval. ‘William!’ she said sharply. ‘Please don’t speak so unkindly of others. Besides, you do not know these people well enough to judge them. Let us change the subject or we would be better to eat our supper in silence.’

  For a few moments, the only sound in the Dentons’ modest little cottage was that of knives and forks scraping on their plates as they ate their stew. Then, keen to lighten the atmosphere, Billy piped up, ‘I had an arithmetic test today. I got full marks.’

  ‘That’s wonderful, Billy, well done,’ said Alice warmly, touching her son on the arm. ‘I am so pleased that you stayed on at school.’

  ‘Pah,’ snorted William. ‘If you ask me, he should have left when he was ten like most of the other lads. He ought to be learning a few real-life lessons by now.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t,’ snapped Alice. ‘Besides, what would you prefer? Would you really rather see him working in the quarry, as most of his old schoolmates are, or getting the education he needs to make something of himself?’

  ‘Make something of himself?’ snarled William, pulling a piece of meat out from between his teeth with his fingers. ‘You mean, make himself a better man than his father? Is that it? The quarry was good enough for me, but not for your precious son?’

  Billy looked down at his plate. ‘It’s not that, Father. There’s nothing wrong with working in the quarry—or on the railway. I admire anyone who does. I just, I want to do something less physical. Use my brain more, if I can.’ William said nothing, but Billy could see the hurt in his father’s eyes.

  Alice tried to reason with her husband. ‘You know, Billy is one of the brightest pupils they have ever had at Wilmcote School. It would be such a shame to waste that.’