World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  He began, as usual, with the mile long walk up to Summit for his early tour of the whole workings. He left Littleborough soon after five. The skies had cleared in the small hours and the wind fell to the merest breeze, which often died to a complete stillness. Yesterday's rain now lay in frosty pools that groaned and shrieked at each footfall. A gibbous moon stood at its zenith, showing the path well enough for him to take the turnpike instead of the longer way by the railroad. Near the rising to Summit, he joined the throng of mill hands who daily at this hour, when trade was brisk, came streaming down from the hovels and cottages at Sally Street, Smithy Nook, Mawrode, Calderbrook, and other hamlets. The air was heavy with a fatigue that no sleep, short of eternal sleep, could lift from their wasted frames. They were women and children mostly— huddled, silent creatures clutching their thin rags about them as they dragged their way over the rail bridge to the steam works by the canal. Smoke already rolled in greasy billows from its tall chimneys. Yellow gaslight reached feebly out through its lint-shrouded windows, illuminating nothing.

  Hot porridge, cold bacon, hard eggs, wheaten bread, and stewed coffee swelled him comfortably. The memory of it was still between his teeth and on his tongue. He looked around him at this wretched human stream and wondered how many dozen of their stomachs it would take to outweigh his. Despite the law, there were children among them of eight and nine, barely awake; one carried on his back a child of five or six, fast asleep still. But then none of them looked like children—more like a new race of stunted men. Bow-legged, crook-backed, two teeth in every three already shed, cheeks hollow, skin shrivelled and sallow, they stared up at him from great incurious eyes, anxious only not to stand in his way.

  His iron-shod boots rang loud amid the shuffle of their bare feet and tattered slippers. He was glad to leave them and take his own customary path to the workings. This daily meeting distressed him. He had once tried leaving Littleborough earlier to avoid it but then had only met the men, women, and children going to the Rakewood coal pits—and compared with them the mill hands were an aristocracy. He turned and looked back at the stragglers, running half-heartedly to catch up. In the pale moonlight their blue breath hung above them, almost as substantial as the wraiths that breathed it out.

  An industry that created and then relied on such starvelings, he thought, was pernicious—a danger to good order. If revolution ever came, here was the wasteland in which it first would breed. Why were people so blind to their own best interests? The well-paid craftsman, who had least to gain from it, formed unions as readily as good soap forms useless scum; these poor mill hands, who had everything to gain—and precious little to lose—would fight one another tooth and claw at the mill gate rather than organize. And the employers were the worst of all; for the misery and resentment they fostered day by day was surely a corrosion that would eat the country into two halves, each renouncing all kinship with the other. At the end of their road stood two Englishmen sustained only by their implacable ignorance of and hostility toward each other. Why could they not see that? If men like Fielden over at Todmorden could keep the hours down to 58, and give two hours' schooling a day to every child at the mill—and turn in a better profit—how could the rest be so blind?

  At six o'clock, the first of his own boozy, guzzling, randy aristocrats came on. Light was scattered all along the line of the workings. Men with lanterns streamed out along the path or struggled up the slope from the trail below. One after another, the engine fires were kindled, throwing out red, flickering light that drowned the first hints of dawn in the east and restored an infernal kind of night in the valley. Men caught in its glow looked strong and full of cheer. They moved with purpose and gusto. He heard singing and laughter.

  Now, as every morning, he inhaled deeply to catch the pungent smell of burning wood and kindling coal. Logs spat and cracked. Boilerplates groaned with the enforced expansion. Cold water began to trill and whistle as it heated. Running water from the cloughs gurgled in the conduits as the trappers diverted the day's quota to the engine reservoirs. As this sleeping giant of his stirred into power and life, the whole of his spirit lifted, and he went to watch the assembly of the new and more powerful winding engine at Number 7 shaft.

  Progress had been slow here, largely because of the 321 feet of shaft up which the muck had to be lifted. The old engine had not really been man enough; this new one, the engineers all said, would move the same loads twice as fast.

  The Manchester & Leeds engineers had not been too happy at the casual way their engine had been hired out to John Stevenson. It was an almost new one of their own design and they wanted to see it work longer under their own immediate supervision before they let it out. Which was why Stevenson had had to wait until November to get it from Miles Platting to where it now lay, above Stanor Bottom Farm at the foot of Reddish Scout. Even so, they had insisted on sending one of their own senior steam engineers out to supervise its reconstruction.

  A band of cold ultramarine hung above the eastern horizon, heralding the day to the Vale of Todmorden. In the growing light the long, rolling moors of Blackstone Edge stretched in a perspective that deepened with every passing minute. Below, the canal and turnpike lay like two pale streaks along the valley floor.

  He told the men to kindle the boiler for Number 7 because they'd need it to steam the new engine; and, in any case, it would take three or four hours to assemble and test, so they might as well use the existing engine until then.

  "Shall I start, sir?" his own engineer, a Scot called McKinnon, asked, nodding at the knocked-down components set out on the moorside.

  "Best wait for their man. Ye could assure yerself it's all there."

  "I might like tae trial-fit their frame tae oor stone base. Just tae be sure the bolts will marry."

  "Aye ye could do that right enough."

  While the gang gingerly lifted the cast-iron frame onto the stone base, he walked away to the outer edge of the spoil heap and looked down at the turnpike. In the dawn twilight he heard the horse long before he saw the horseman; and so, too, did the keeper of the toll bar, who came hurrying out with his lantern to halt the rider. Stevenson chuckled, imagining the keeper's chagrin as he saw the rider turn uphill at Stanor Bottom, a few yards short of the bar. It must be the company's engineer. Stevenson ran helter-skelter down the side of the heap to meet him.

  The way up was steep and stony, and the rider had wisely dismounted. He and his horse were no more than shadows against the dark hills beyond.

  "Stephenson," the rider said.

  Stevenson laughed genially. "Aye." He shook hands. "Ye have the advantage I fear."

  "Stephenson," the other repeated, a little bewildered. "Robert Stephenson. Engineer."

  "Aah!"

  Each realized simultaneously where the confusion lay.

  "So you are John Stevenson!"

  "Aye. With a v. Indeed. I'm greatly honoured, sir. Greatly. We have, in fact, met. Once you came up with your father. In July. I was ganger on the numberone face, then. Ye'd not remember though."

  "I do indeed, Mr. Stevenson. Your shadow has not shrunk, I see."

  They walked up the track. After a short distance, they left it to join the path that linked the line of shafts.

  "I expect today part of you is wishing you were back at number-one face," Stephenson said.

  "How?"

  "This trouble with your brickies."

  John chuckled. "When you build an engine to steam a hundred miles an hour, you've a name ready made."

  "Oh. What would that be?"

  "Bad news!"

  The engineer threw back his head and laughed with a sudden violence that made his horse shy.

  They tethered it on a long rope and left it to graze around the clough. By the time they reached the engine site, the first touch of gold was lifting up the east.

  "What a country!" Stephenson said. "How can we plan for anything? Yesterday—the depths of a wet midwinter. Today—apologies to one and all— we're to be giv
en a bit of autumn the clerk-of-the-weather forgot!"

  For the next few hours, Stephenson and McKinnon—and Thornton, who joined them soon after Stephenson had arrived—patiently assembled the engine, joining piston to crosshead, crosshead to crank, crank to flywheel, and lavishing oil and grease and tallow over every moving or sliding part.

  John watched them carefully, though a thicket of engineers' heads often obscured the view and he was left to infer the wonders of this new machine from Stephenson's proud grunts of self-congratulation and the answering whistles and cries of admiration from Thornton and McKinnon. From time to time, Stephenson included him in the explanation of the engine, whose novelty lay in the ingenious way they had been able to raise the operating pressure (and thus the temperature gradient…and thus the power delivered) without adding extra piston rings of hemp.

  "So we keep the friction of the rings down to acceptable levels, you see," Stephenson said.

  John nodded. "If that's another way of saying my coalyard bill for numberseven shaft is going to drop, I'm greatly in favour of it."

  Stephenson chuckled and looked at the other two. "There's a man who knows what we're all about." He jerked his thumb at John over his shoulder. "A beautiful piece of mechanics like that, a beautiful little construction, all the excitement…and what is it to him? A lower figure on the coalyard bill at the end of the month!"

  They laughed.

  "I'm right though," John said. "Ye'd not do it if it put the bills up."

  Stephenson agreed. "There has to be a division somewhere between engineering and architecture, and I daresay that's it. Architects put the cost up. Engineers down."

  It took a further hour to sweat the brass bushes onto the crank and cross-head and to get it perfectly lined. Then there was the boiler-feed pump to connect to the cross-head slide, and the flywheel to bolt to the shaft. Then, after some minor adjustments to the eccentric shaft and rocker, and after lavishing pints more oil over every moving surface, the engine was ready to steam.

  They first turned the flywheel several dozen revolutions by hand, and the sweat that poured from the navvies who did the turning was a handsome testimonial to the power the machine would deliver even when idling. Then, they cautiously opened the steam valve on the new feed line. The paint in the threads at the junctions bubbled and wheezed until the pressure made the seal firm. For a while nothing happened. The hot steam, rushing through the tubes, dropping in pressure and meeting the cold metal, condensed uselessly in the cylinder. And when the engine did finally make its first trembling revolution—to a rousing cheer from the whole company—the waste-steam pipe spat and spluttered like a bull with a loose bowel.

  Soon it was turning, slow and smoothly, at about 50 rpm. Stephenson and the two other engineers listened carefully, checked oil-galley levels, squatted on sight lines with moving parts, accelerated the engine, decelerated it, started it slowly, started it with a jolt, tested the flywheel brake, and all the while exchanged private glances of worry or approval or relief.

  "Works like a free pardon," John said.

  Stephenson agreed. "Very well, McKinnon," he said. "She's all yours for the next hour. Take her slowly up to about 200 rpm. We'll get that hemp nicely bedded in before we set her to work."

  The boilerman brought a pail of warm water and some soap. Within minutes the engineers were gentlemen again.

  "Well, Stevenson-with-a-v," Stephenson said, "my father wants me to look over these workings while I'm here."

  "Gladly, sir. If I may, I'll join ye at number three in half an hour. Thornton'll show ye the first two. There's a little matter I must attend to."

  "Do you know who the ringleaders are?" Thornton asked, implying by his tone that he did.

  "I've not been informed. But I'll guess as to three of 'em. I'll guess Thomas Metcalfe, number one. And I'll guess Arthur Burroughs and Wilfred Hope. Hundred to one—are ye on?"

  Thornton gave a shrug of resignation. "It's useless," he said to Stephenson. "You can't tell that man a thing he doesn't know about this working."

  "I hope he knows what he's doing with it," Stephenson said. The serious threat in his voice was only partly masked by humour.

  John plucked a straw of dead grass. "So do I." He sighed lugubriously and put the grass in his mouth. "Aye—so do I an' all."

  But Robert Stephenson had other ideas. "Where are your brickies—these three leaders you mentioned?"

  "They'll be working—if that's the right word—on the oval shaft at the summit of the line."

  "We'll come with you then. I don't mind which end we begin." They started walking. "In fact, I'd prefer that end, so that we can all go and take luncheon in Littleborough."

  The path was the same as the one John had taken when he first met Arabella Thornton standing up on the Scout with her husband—indeed it was the only path between the Scout and Deanroyd.

  The sun was now well up in a sky of clear cerulean blue. It shone in an autumnal thinness, barely warming to the skin; but it struck the moorland with dazzling clarity, picking out such colour and detail that you felt you had suddenly gained new powers of vision. There was now no wind at all and the smoke from the engine boilers, and from all the factories and mills up the valley, rose straight and black, not dispersed until the columns topped a thousand feet.

  "On such a day," Robert Stephenson said, "you can really see and feel the power of man." He spoke with a pride which they, by their agreement, shared. They gained the brow of the Scout in silence.

  "Who will you put to tend that new engine?" Thornton asked.

  "Pengilly, I think," John said. "He's shaping well."

  It was a moment or two before Thornton connected. "Ah yes! Your discovery!" He turned to his senior. "This Stevenson is a most amazing man, you know, sir, at discovering people. He's an explorer in the land of human skill. Pengilly, this new engine-minder, was an ordinary navvy on Stevenson's own gang. Now he's a full-blown steam engineer!"

  "How so?" Stephenson asked.

  Thornton wet his lips with relish. "Thereby hangs a tale. There was an accident and he lost a leg…"

  "Only a foot," John insisted. "It wasn't a leg. Only a foot."

  "Well…" Thornton waved a dismissive circle though he knew perfectly well it had been a whole leg to the knee. "A foot then. Anyway—there's a man who's a fit object for parish relief; but Stevenson here…what was it you did?"

  John reached inside his cravat and scratched his neck uncomfortably. "I learned he'd tended an engineer on a big Cornish engine, when he was younger. So I told him I'd give him a trial at one o' these engines. Now…ye'd think he'd never done owt else all his life."

  "You see! A discoverer."

  Stephenson looked at the contractor with a new interest. "And there's Mrs. Stevenson, too, I hear," he said. "I hope we may meet at luncheon. If she hasn't gone sowing fear and terror among the merchants of Manchester!"

  John laughed then. As before, he led the way down the stepped part of the trail.

  "I may claim a little credit there," Thornton said, bringing up the rear. "For it was I discovered her first. May I tell it, Stevenson?" he asked.

  "I find it all an acute embarrassment," John said. "But I dare say that'll not deter ye. Thereby hangs a different tail, eh?"

  "Oh come! It's too good not to tell. Stevenson's wife, you know, sir, comes from an old landowning family near Leeds. The Tellings of Normanton. But they fell on hard times and this August with her father dead and the two younger children dead as well, she was left alone and as good as destitute. Over in Manchester. And she was tramping this way, intending to take this very track we're on now, when she met me. Or I met her. Anyway, our paths crossed." He turned to look behind. "No, you can't see it from here. But there's an ancient cemetery just the far side of Calderbrook. That's where we met. She was so exhausted I told her she'd not make it over here to Todmorden before nightfall— and in any case, the Todmorden Union has refused to build a workhouse."

  "Still?" Stephenson ask
ed, in surprise.

  "Oh—that is going to be a long, bitter fight," Thornton said. "But that's another story. The long and short of it was, I sent her to seek a night's shelter with Stevenson's gang, knowing he'd not see her starve."

  "Your reputation for charity may now be your undoing, Mr. Stevenson," the engineer said.

  "I have no charity, sir, as ye'll hear when Thornton drags out the ending of this interminable tale. But even if I had, it would not extend to bricklayers and other highly overpaid tradesmen!"

  They all laughed at that. By now, they had gained the broader path, below the house called Rough Stones, and they could stride out side by side.