by Helen Watts
‘Yes, I imagine they would,’ said Ben, sounding rather cautious. ‘But they won’t necessarily have all the answers. You’ll just have to tell me what it is you need to know, and I’ll do my best to remember. Remember to ask them, that is.’
Kelly smiled and watched her friend in silence as he gathered some tiny stones and started to throw them, one by one, into the water. She noticed how nerdy his shoes were and realised that he was sporting the same clothes as the previous times she had met him. She could still see traces of mud on his trousers, too, where Tyson had jumped up that first day on the railway bridge. Ben’s family were clearly not very well off. It was probably a good thing that he didn’t go to The Shakespeare Academy. People like Charlotte would eat him alive.
As much as she liked Ben, he was a little odd. At times he was so hesitant, so unsure of himself, as if in some way he needed help. He must get lonely like me, she thought, being educated at home. He certainly didn’t seem to have any other real friends—at least, none that he had told her about. Perhaps this project would be good for both of them.
Chapter 15 – September 2012
Before the two friends parted that evening, Kelly outlined to Ben the brief she had been given for her history project, explaining that she had to include lots of evidence to back up everything she wrote.
‘So you’re going to have to take me to all the key historical sites around here—the quarry, the lime kiln, the tramway, that sort of thing. Can you do that?’ Kelly asked, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. Hardly giving Ben time to nod, let alone reply, she went on, ‘I’m fascinated by the stone pits and all the places where the stone ended up, so I think we should start our research there, don’t you? The opening of the quarry must have triggered lots of changes here in Wilmcote. We just need to find out what they were.’
The pair agreed to meet up at the quarry the following Saturday morning. Their rendezvous point was the limestone stepping stones on the footpath near where Ben had emerged from the trees on that sunny day back in the summer holidays.
‘I’ve brought my camera with me,’ Kelly announced as she and Tyson ran up to Ben, who had arrived first. ‘Mr Walker says we need to use as many different kinds of historical sources as we can. So photos are a good place to start, aren’t they?’
‘Er, I suppose so,’ said Ben, looking dubiously at the camera. ‘What kind of camera is it?’
‘Oh, it’s really lush. I had it for my birthday last year. It’s digital. Takes high def video too, and I can link it up to Mum’s laptop so it’s easy to download the photos.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Ben, who clearly didn’t.
Kelly suddenly felt guilty. Perhaps Ben’s mum and dad couldn’t afford to buy things like digital cameras and laptops. She made a mental note to be a bit less flashy about her family’s possessions in future. ‘Anyway,’ she hurried on, ‘it doesn’t matter what kind of camera it is as long as it takes photos. And the more photos the better, I say. The more pictures we have, the less room there will be for writing, eh?’ She winked, and was relieved to see Ben laugh in response.
Ben led the way along the hedgerow until they came to the point where the barbed wire and the fence post were bent downwards.
‘We can climb through here,’ he instructed. ‘But be very, very careful going down. Follow me and watch where I’m putting my feet. The slope’s steep and the soil’s pretty loose, so if you step in the wrong place you might start a landslide.’
He evidently saw Kelly’s look of alarm. ‘Look, Kel, it’s a quarry. It’s a dangerous place. But I know it well so just do what I do and you’ll be fine.’
Ben climbed over the fence first and asked Kelly to pass Tyson over into his arms so he didn’t get caught on the wire. Kelly followed and then took hold of Tyson’s lead again, ready to edge her way down into the pit.
‘There’s enough of a gap in the trees here to get through, but you will need to keep your head low so you don’t get caught on any spikes.’
Kelly watched closely as Ben took his first few tentative steps down over the edge of pit, feeling his footing as he went. Then she took a deep breath and started to follow, trying to place her feet where she had seen Ben putting his. Tyson, excited at the prospect of a new adventure, was straining at the lead and making it difficult for her to keep her balance.
‘You’re going to have to let him off,’ Ben called, looking back up the slope to see how she was doing. ‘He’s going to pull you over. You’ll both be safer on your own. And don’t worry, he can’t go far down here.’
Kelly was about to remind Ben of Tyson’s lust for chasing rabbits and then thought better of it. Ben was right. She let the dog go and said a little silent prayer as he raced ahead down the quarry side, disappearing into the undergrowth.
After a few minutes of slow progress, Kelly and Ben finally made it down to the quarry floor. Left to its own devices for so long, the quarry had been transformed from a noisy, dusty, rock-strewn lunar landscape to a fertile green jungle, a secret garden hidden from the rest of the world by the abundant trees and hedges which had colonised its sides.
Down in the base of the pit, the bushes were lower and more sparse, so it was easier to move and look around and get an idea of the size and scale of the quarry. Tyson was in his element, running back and forth, his tail in the air, sniffing everything and anything he could find.
Kelly could see where the steepest rock faces must have been and where, to the far end, the ground sloped more gently, leading up to a narrow, funnel-shaped gap.
‘Was that the main entrance into the pit, over there?’ she asked Ben, pointing towards the shallower end of the pit.
‘Yes. That was where they brought the carts in, so they could load them up with stone.’
Kelly made her way over to the base of one of the steeper sides of the old rock face where there was a pile of earth with some large pieces of limestone poking out. With her hand, she began to sweep off some of the loose soil to expose more of the rocks underneath. She wiggled one piece of rock back and forth until she was able to pull it free from the pile. Flat, smooth, and about the size of her palm, it was an almost perfect diamond shape, about five centimetres thick, ideal for scraping away soil and prising out more loose stones.
Using her new tool, Kelly carried on excavating for another twenty minutes. She found the repetition and the physicality of the work surprisingly relaxing—so much so that she let her imagination wander. For a moment she was back in Victorian times, chopping away at the stone face alongside dozens of other quarry workers. So when she removed another stone and exposed a piece of metal sticking out of the ground, at first she didn’t react. But then she started to gently brush the soil away from around the object and her excitement grew as she realised that the protruding piece of metal was the handle of an old mug.
‘Ben! Ben! Come over here! Look what I’ve found,’ she shouted across to her friend, who had been poking about on the other side of the quarry, with Tyson at his heels. With Ben looking closely over her shoulder, Kelly carefully worked the mug free and held it up to the light. ‘Do you think it belonged to one of the quarry workers?’
‘No reason why not,’ said Ben. The rusty old piece of metal, although flattened somewhat by the weight of the soil and rocks on top of it, had remained remarkably intact so that there was no doubt as to its original purpose.
‘Tyson and I found something too.’ Ben showed Kelly the remains of an old trowel. The handle had long since rotted away in the ground but the spike by which it had been attached, and the shape of the trowel itself, were clearly recognisable, despite being encrusted with rust-stained soil.
‘Well, aren’t we a couple of budding archaeologists!’ said Kelly, with a smile. I think this deserves a celebratory photo, don’t you? I can put it on Facebook. Our first find.’
Kelly proudly arranged the mug, the trowel and her diamond-shaped piece of limestone on a large rock nearby.
Then she turned back to Ben. ‘Right. I
need you to go over there and stand next to our finds. I want you in the photo too.’
‘Why? Surely it’s the artefacts that matter most.’
‘Yes, but we need to give some idea of scale, so if you stand next to them people can see how big the objects are, and I can show how high that slope is behind you, too. Besides, it will be nice to have you in it.’ Ben seemed reluctant to move. ‘What? Don’t tell me you’re camera shy!’ Kelly cried.
‘No, I just think that it should be you in the picture, not me. Your teacher will want to know that you’ve done this yourself.’
‘Okay, but he won’t mind me having some help. I tell you what, I’ll put it on self-timer. That way we can both be in it.’
Although still reluctant, Ben waited patiently while Kelly fiddled with the controls and made sure that the camera was positioned in just the right place to get them both in the frame.
By the time the little green light had flashed itself to a frenzy, and the shutter had finally clicked, minutes had passed. Kelly was just about to check the shot when Ben shouted, ‘Hey Kel, where’s Tyson?’
Clearly, the little dog had got bored of sniffing around in the same spot and had wandered off to find something more interesting to explore.
Kelly called his name, but there was no response. She tried again, and they strained their ears to see if they could hear him rustling about in the bushes.
‘What was that?’ whispered Kelly, reaching out to try to catch Ben’s arm. ‘Did you hear that tapping sound?’
There it was again. Tap, tap, tap. Quiet at first but gradually getting louder.
‘It’s coming from up there,’ said Ben, pointing to the slope they had scrambled down. ‘It must be Tyson. Tyson!’ he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.
Silence. Then the tapping sound resumed. Kelly felt the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Ben would probably laugh at her if she said it, but to her the noise sounded like someone chipping away at a piece of stone. If you let your imagination run away with you, she thought, it could very easily have been someone working in the quarry.
Ben took control. ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘I think we had better get out of here. Whatever that noise is, it’s not Tyson.’
He set off straight away, but Kelly, remembering her precious finds, ran back to load the stone, the old cup and trowel into her canvas shoulder bag. Not wanting to damage her camera, she pulled off her jacket and wrapped her camera in it, then placed that on top of the objects in the bag. She was moving as quickly as she could, but when she looked up Ben had disappeared from view and it dawned on her that she had no idea which way he had gone. Had he climbed back up the way they had come down, or had he gone another way, away from the source of the strange noise? She had no idea but, remembering Ben’s warning about the quarry sides collapsing, she was too scared to take any other path than the one she had come down. She would just have to take her chances with the mystery quarryman.
She ran up the first part of the bank and then began to scramble up through the bushes. The higher she climbed, the steeper the bank grew, and she began to struggle to keep her footing, especially now that she had the added handicap of the heavy canvas bag, which kept swinging around her thighs, knocking her off balance.
She began to tremble, not knowing what she was more frightened of—falling back down, not being able to find Ben and Tyson, or running into a pick-wielding zombie. Her fear mounting, she was about to cry out when she looked up and saw a patch of blue sky above her. She was near to the top.
The thought of reaching ground level again spurred her on, and with one final effort, she launched herself up to catch hold of a low-hanging branch and used it to lever herself upwards to the lip of the quarry. That was when her eyes drew level with a pair of muddy old boots. Someone was towering over her. She froze, too terrified to look up to see who the boots belonged to.
Then a gruff voice. ‘Grab my hand!’
Kelly glanced upwards, half expecting to see the ghostly figure of an old quarryman. But the whiskered face peering down at her belonged firmly in the twenty-first century. It was a local rambler—an angry one, his metal-tipped walking stick tapping furiously on the rocks at the pit edge. He pulled Kelly up to her feet beside him and almost dragged her through the bushes and back over the barbed wire fence. ‘What on God’s earth did you think you were doing down there young lady?’ he growled. ‘Did yer parents never tell you that disused quarries were not the best places to play? You could have got yerself killed.’
Kelly was about to reply when she noticed Tyson, tethered to the fence post. He was baring his teeth and letting out a low but persistent grumble. The man had used his belt as a makeshift lead and had looped it through Tyson’s collar then over the post. Seeing Kelly, the furious little dog tried to shake himself free, and began biting at the belt.
‘Oi, you little blighter. My wife bought me that belt!’ He took a step towards Tyson.
‘I’ll stop him!’ Kelly cried out, worried what the man was about to do. Taking his lead from her pocket, she dashed over to Tyson and swapped it for the belt.
‘So, he’s your mutt, is he?’ the man snarled. ‘I found him running free in the field up here. Having a whale of a time, he was, racing about, chasing the rabbits. You’re just lucky that there weren’t any sheep up here. A loose dog like that, running amok, could get himself shot. It was as much as I could do to catch hold of ‘im.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kelly said. ‘But he’s very protective towards me, so he doesn’t like strangers handling him. I do usually keep him on the lead, but I knew there weren’t any farm animals about.’
The man didn’t soften. ‘You still haven’t told me what you were doing down there in the old quarry. You’ve no right to be there. You should stay on the footpath. If the farmer doesn’t know you, he’ll assume you’re trespassing. And he can be a grumpy old so and so, can Tony. I can say that, cos he’s a mate of mine. I live in the village.’
‘Oh, it’s okay,’ replied Kelly, surreptitiously wiping the slobber off the man’s belt on her jeans before handing it back. ‘My friend, he’s with me…’ She looked around. ‘Or at least, he was. He must have gone the other way. You spooked us a little and I got left behind. But wherever he is, his dad helps to look after the farm. He’s allowed to play here. He comes here all the time.’
‘Does he now?’ remarked the rambler, raising his eyebrows. ‘Well, allowed or not, that old quarry is dangerous. I’d find somewhere else to play, if I were you.’
Kelly really didn’t like this pompous old man, with his designer walking gear and his fancy walking stick, which he pointed accusingly at her when he spoke. Normally she would have told him where to go, but not wanting to get Ben into trouble (where was he?) she bit her tongue, mumbled her thanks and hurried off to find Ben.
She found him sitting waiting for her on the tree trunk by the old lime kiln.
‘I thought this would be a good place to wait for you. What happened?’ he asked, giving her a lopsided smile.
‘A man caught me climbing up the bank. That rambler. Didn’t you see him?’
‘Nope.’ Ben shook his head. ‘I must have gone a different way.’
‘Well lucky old you!’ said Kelly, a little annoyed, now, that Ben had gone off without making sure she was following. ‘He wasn’t very nice. He’d caught Tyson and had him tied to the post and was talking about how the farmer would shoot him. Oh, and he said he knew Tony.’
‘Tony?’
‘The farmer. The one your dad works for.’
‘Oh, that Tony.’ Ben looked anxious. ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘Only that we ought to find somewhere safer to hang out. Listen, are you sure we’re okay to go into the quarry? The man was right, really. It is pretty dangerous.’
‘Well, no one has stopped me before,’ said Ben defensively.
That’s not quite the same thing, thought Kelly to herself, but not wanting to get into an argument she let it
go.
‘I’m bushed,’ she said, flopping down onto the tree trunk next to him. ‘You know, if you don’t mind, I might head home. I think Tyson and I have had enough excitement for one day and I don’t want to bump into that man again.’
Ben shrugged, obviously far less shaken by the whole episode than Kelly.
‘I think I’ll take these into school on Monday, to see what Mr Walker makes of them,’ Kelly said, patting the canvas by her side.
Ben offered to walk Kelly and Tyson back across the fields. When they reached the railway bridge, he announced that he had better turn back and head off in the direction of home.
‘Okay,’ agreed Kelly, grateful that he had stayed with her that far, in case they met up with the miserable rambler. ‘Thanks for showing me the quarry today.’
Ben smiled. ‘My pleasure. By the way, Kel. That boot you, well, Tyson found…’
‘Yeah?’
‘Can I see it?’
‘Why?’
‘I dunno. I just wondered if you might be right. If it could be a clue or a link to the past.’
‘To what exactly?’
‘To the people who built the railway.’
Kelly’s face brightened. ‘So you agree with me? It might be old?’
Ben gave a little shrug. ‘Well, it’s possible. Let’s just say, I might have a way of finding out.’
‘Now I’m curious.’ Kelly laughed. ‘Okay, I’ll bring it next time we meet. Next Saturday maybe? On the canal bridge? Midday?’
‘Sounds perfect,’ said Ben.
Chapter 16 – September 2012
The Shakespeare Academy had a rule about not carrying bags around school. Every student was given a locker and encouraged to store their outdoor coats, bags and rucksacks there for the day, taking to lessons only the folders, books and pens and pencils they needed. The idea was introduced, said the school prospectus, to reduce the amount of lost property, and to protect students and staff from pupils who might otherwise smuggle unsuitable items into lessons. Whether a lump of rock, a jagged metal masonry tool and an old tin cup were the kind of items the headteacher had in mind when he introduced the new policy, Kelly wasn’t sure, although she was pretty certain that he would consider them to be unsuitable.
