The Stones
PATRICK THOMPSON WAS born in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1963. He has held down “several of those jobs writers do: managing a small newsagent’s, medical records clerk, tiler (roof), breaking large stones with a hammer (not a very good job, that one), kitchen assistant (i.e. oven cleaner/pan scraper), furniture warehouseman and software engineer (i.e. playing Doom).” He is currently working with computers and writing most of the rest of the time.
“The Stones” was his first published story, and also the first one he submitted anywhere. There are others due to be published, and he is currently working on a novel “set in, around, or close to the sea – it’ll be horror of thereabouts, and I’ve been writing, rewriting and revising it for most of my adult life.”
The long wait for the following story to originally appear proved too much for Thompson’s pet tarantula, Fuchsia, as he explains: “Alas, she passed away – I’m looking for a replacement now. The deceased now resides Somewhere In The Garden, where at least she’ll still be able to alarm people, albeit posthumously.”
NEIL LED HER into the shop, which turned out to be not much more than a front room. Shelves held dayglo beach toys and guides to coastal walks, painted pebbles and boxes crusted with shells, dust and webs and sweets in jars without labels. They’d gone to Cornwall looking for the standing stones and ancient places; they’d visited Tintagel, the remains of the castle contoured around the headlands, the cliffs dropping down to the coves littered with shattered driftwood, the gulls wheeling in the sky and falling to the sea far below. Driving across Bodmin Moor they’d stopped at the Hurlers, two circles of standing stones containing families having picnics. Jane hadn’t felt anything there, except for cold. She didn’t know what she’d expected to feel, a sense of time perhaps, a feeling of power or magic. As they’d driven on they’d passed empty engine houses and mills, tall buildings with tall windows and disconnected chimneys standing near them. They hadn’t found anything older, hadn’t seen any of the rocks inscribed with Celtic knots they’d expected to see or the burial stones arranged atop each other in otherwise empty fields. In Truro, they’d looked in the museum shop for guidebooks, but there were none giving details of the land that had been there before Cornwall; all of the leaflets in the racks had been advertisements for leisure parks and zoos and aquaria. Jane had heard that Cornwall’s history was on show wherever you drove, in fields and on the rocky outcrops, on the cliffs that ran brokenly down to the seas full of wrecks, but they hadn’t found anything older than the engine houses and their chimneys. Neil had shared her disappointment, but then, Neil always did. He’d driven them around narrow lanes, to villages at the edge of the land, looking for something they hadn’t found. She didn’t know, and hadn’t known since she’d met him, whether Neil shared her interests or went along with her because he loved her, and she didn’t mind.
They’d met at work. She’d seen him around the offices, and had thought nothing about it. He wasn’t attractive, or at least not to her. Then, one day, he’d called her at her desk on the internal line and asked her out, unexpectedly. She’d said yes, thinking that it would at least be interesting; and that had been it. In the two years since, they’d grown together and gone on holidays together and taken each other through some troubled times. It had been her idea to try Cornwall, and he’d agreed to drive there; he was like that. She wasn’t always sure that he was happy – who would be, stuck with her? – but he told her that he was and most of the time, she knew it was true.
She looked over the guides in the shop, not seeing anything interesting. She had thought that there would be at least a few detailing ancient monuments, but the tourist board didn’t seem keen to promote them. Perhaps with the loss of the tin mining industry they needed tourists to spend more money; perhaps they were unaware of their history, being close to it all the time, and didn’t think it necessary to give directions. Neil was talking to the old woman who sat behind a counter; after a while he asked Jane if she was ready to go and she said that she was. As they left the old woman looked over at them and gave them a smile; they’d both agreed, earlier in the holiday, that they hadn’t been among such friendly people before.
“She said we could try the book shops,” Neil told her, “and maybe pick up a guide there.”
“We’ve tried them,” said Jane. “They don’t have anything. And that’s if there is a book shop, usually there isn’t, there’re just three hundred fudge shops full of Cockneys.”
“Better than three hundred Cockney shops full of fudge,” said Neil. “Anyway, she said there’s a book shop in the village.”
“I didn’t see one on the way through,” she said, taking hold of him and turning her face up for a kiss.
“Neither did I.” He kissed her, nicely. She let him. “We could try the coast walk, instead.”
“There’s a beach,” she said. “There is on the map, anyway. We’ll probably need a helicopter to get to it.”
“If it’s there at all. Come on, then.” He took her hand and led her towards the sea, which was shining and as calm as it ever was. An old man stood quietly outside his house, and said hello to them as they reached him. If he hadn’t, they wouldn’t have seen the small sign etched into the stone over the front door, saying that the house was a book shop.
“Told you there was a book shop,” said Neil. “That’s three pasties you owe me.”
“We don’t have much,” said the old man in a slow quiet voice. “Not much at the moment.”
“Not much demand, I suppose,” said Neil.
“Sometimes,” said the old man. “Now and then. What were you after? Books to take home for the children, for presents, for the family?”
“Something about the history of the area,” said Jane, not knowing whether or not she was being patronizing. “Something about the old stones.”
“There are some here,” he said. “Not far from here, down on the shore. Difficult walk, though. Difficult for young ones.” He looked at the two of them. “You’ll be all right,” he said.
“Whereabouts?” asked Neil.
“Left there,” said the man, pointing down the road. His arm moved slowly, and Jane heard the old bones creak. “Follow that road, it leads right there. Take the path down. You’ll do fine.”
“Thanks,” said Neil. He pulled gently at Jane’s hand. She smiled a goodbye and let him lead on. The old man went inside his shop as they walked away.
A few houses further on, they found a road to the left, leading between two houses to the fields that ended at the cliffs. They walked past the houses; Jane looked back at the back of the row, wondering which one was the book shop. She must have miscounted; it couldn’t have been the fourth one along, which was as empty and unused as the engine houses they’d seen on the moors. She looked at Neil, and saw that he was also looking back, and looking puzzled.
“Come on,” she said.
“We don’t have to go,” said Neil. “There’s probably nothing there.”
“It’ll be interesting,” she said. “There’ll be rockpools to play in. Got your net?” She was mostly joking; he really did like messing around in rock pools. She’d joked with him about his crab fixation once, when he’d been doing something ticklish to her.
“I suppose,” he said, not sounding all that enthusiastic. He squeezed her hand and they walked on towards the sea. The coast rose above it; as they left the village the road became first a track and then a thin path, which led through a thicket of trees. It turned out to be an overgrown garden, or something like one, although there were no houses nearby. Perhaps, thought Jane, it had once been a park or the garden of a house that had gone, over the cliffs and into the sea. A rockery was almost hidden by weeds. Two statues, old and weathered, looked out to sea. There were stones scattered around them, like cairns, thought Jane. The path led between the statues, and then downwards, for that was where the land ended. The path then zigzagged down the cliff to a beach of rounded pebbles and massed rocks reaching out into th
e waves, as though the land was holding on. They made their way down the path, which obviously wasn’t well used; hardly used at all, thought Jane. She looked back up at the trees and the statues, but one of them was hidden, either by the trees or by the slope. The one she could see reminded her of the old man, of the way he’d stood outside his shop, not moving until they’d disturbed him. She wondered whether he’d understood what sort of stones she’d been interested in, for the beach had plenty of rocks on it, huge ones larger than herself which must have fallen from the cliffside, but not the standing stones she’d wanted to see. As Neil stepped onto the beach she thought that perhaps they’d better go back; the tide was obviously out, but she didn’t want to get cut off, not somewhere so remote. She didn’t want to have to climb up away from the path, if they were unable to reach it; and she wouldn’t have wanted to shout, not there, although she didn’t know why not. Spars of rock led out into the sea, with the huge boulders at the base of the cliffs giving way to smaller rocks and then pebbles further out towards the water. Neil guided her down onto the beach, holding her hands and facing her. She turned up her face for a kiss but he’d turned away, too interested in the rockpools. He let go of her hands and looked out to sea.
“There aren’t any stones here,” he said. “Well, there are about twelve billion stones, but not the sort we were looking for.”
“It’s a nice place,” said Jane, not sure why that felt like a lie. “Maybe there’s something along the coast a bit.”
“Perhaps,” said Neil. He walked to the nearest spur of granite and looked in a pool of sea water. His reflection looked back at him, rippling. Underneath it strands of weed reached up greenly, trying to catch him. The rocks were overrun with damp bladderwrack, lying shaggily over them and hiding their shapes. Only the pebbles were clear, bright little pebbles in different colours, bearing traces of minerals and ores. The waves were falling well away from the cliffs, so they wouldn’t have any trouble with the tide if they wanted to look around for a while. The broken shell of a crab lay against the rocks close to where Neil stood, empty red fragments dropped there by a hungry gull, he thought. The curve of the shore and the long spurs running from it to the water hid the rest of the bay from them. Jane walked out to the water’s edge to see if she could get a better view. Surely the old man would have known what she’d been looking for? He couldn’t have thought she meant the rocks around them, the weed-covered stones lying around them like shaggy dogs sleeping. She felt apologetic for the thought; of course the old man hadn’t misled them. He knew the area better than she did, better than Neil and the map did, and he would have known where the older stones were, the magic stones, if there were such things at all. At the foot of the cliffs she could feel something of that power, the power she hadn’t found in the stone circles on the moors. Here was stone in its element, she thought, not caught or shaped or tamed but allowed to lie where it would. Beneath her pebbles shifted, moved by her weight, as though they had been waiting for her to move them. Small waves fell slowly towards her and then ran brokenly away, turning the smaller pebbles. Each reluctant wave switched the coloured stones, turning them over and redrawing the shore. She looked back up at the cliffs, to where the two statues stood together in their shelter of leaning windswept trees. From the beach, the statues seemed to be looking towards each other, one leaning slightly towards the other as though it was listening. Neil was vanishing over the spur of rock to her left, through the massed seaweed, stepping carefully past rockpools. She started up the flank of the spur, finding it difficult to walk through the weeds, which hid wet holes and ankle-twisting ridges of stone. Neil heard her clumsy movements and waited for her on the next section of the beach. He looked preoccupied with something; as she reached him he indicated a pool at his feet. She looked in but could only see strands of weed, nothing interesting.
“Found a fish?” she asked.
“There’s nothing in them,” said Neil. She couldn’t see why that would upset him, but something had. His face, his wonderful face, didn’t look right. She hadn’t seen the expression he was wearing before. “Just empty ones,” he said, and she thought he meant empty pools until she looked more closely and saw the scattered wreckage of crab shells between the weeds. She’d thought that it was pebbles or sand, at first.
“The seagulls must be hungry,” she said, feeling deceitful for no reason she could think of.
“There aren’t any,” said Neil, looking up. “I don’t think they come here.” Jane hadn’t noticed that, not until Neil said it. It must have been the absence of gulls that had made the beach feel strange. Not that it had, she corrected herself. Not really.
“These stones,” said Neil, indicating the boulders at the foot of the cliff. “These are the ones he meant.”
“What?”
“These stones. He didn’t mean anything else, he just meant these. There’s nothing here, I don’t think there’s anything here. We should go. If the tide – we should go.” Jane didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know what he wanted her to say. Perhaps he could feel the same thing she could feel, that sense of age, that feeling of having found the ancient land, the one that had been there before the Celts or the carvings had begun to change things. She felt a sort of peace, but Neil clearly didn’t. He didn’t like the place.
“Let’s have a look around,” she said. “Just for a while. Then go.”
He didn’t answer her, but instead just looked at the rockpool. Looking down with him, she saw their faces looking up, distorted by ripples and run through with seaweed. She climbed the next spur; from the top, looking at the pebbles, she saw a design there, an organization in the colours. Neil was next to the foot of the cliff, lifting weeds from the boulders to see what was underneath. Two limpets gleamed dully close to his hand; she almost called to him, frightened that the rock had opened its eyes but of course she was wrong. He let the weeds go and climbed up to join her.
“Look,” she said. “The pebbles. There’s a pattern there, it changes with the waves but its there.”
“I don’t want to,” he said, and she finally realized that his expression was one of fear, of absolute discomfort. “I’ll see what’s down here and we’ll go.” She couldn’t argue with him, although she felt only peaceful, not in any way threatened. She felt as though she was in her place, as though she had found what she had been looking for, erroneously, at the stone circles. Neil climbed down to the next area of the beach, and she returned to the one she’d just climbed from. If Neil wasn’t comfortable, then perhaps they should go; but she didn’t see why she should. Above her the cliff loomed, as it had done for countless centuries. The design she’d seen in the rows of veined pebbles was becoming clearer, and she thought of landing lights and runways. From higher up, perhaps the picture would be clearer. She looked up and saw a statue looking down, but it couldn’t have been a statue because the figure hid when she saw it. She heard a clatter of rocks from the next part of the beach.
“Neil?” she said, sure that she’d heard, over the clatter, him saying something. “Neil?” Her voice ran out to sea and was lost, somewhere in the waves which were falling so far away from the cliffs, which didn’t want to fall on the beach. She ran up the spur Neil had climbed over, falling in the tangled weeds, bruising her fingers on hidden stones. He wasn’t on the next section of the beach. It was deserted, except for a cluster of large boulders next to a rockpool. A fat white crab sat in the shelter of the rocks, at the edge of the pool. Neil had been wrong then, there was something alive on the beach after all. The pool was the wrong colour, somehow. The pool was reflecting red. The crab must have caught something that bled, she thought, a fish or a gull, one of the gulls that she hadn’t seen. It could have been, a gull she’d heard crying, and not Neil. It could have been, could have been. She walked over to the pool which was growing redder like a sunset. The crab was white and didn’t move, but sat at the edge of the red pool, wearing a ring she’d given to Neil; his hand, she thought, his hand and he m
ust be under the rocks. She cried his name and climbed over the rocks, lifting strands of damp seaweed and finding nothing until a handful of bladderwrack pulled away and his face was there looking up, his beautiful face, his dead face ripped and running and then she was running too. She ran over the spur and fell onto the beach, and the sound of falling stones made her look up. A few small stones were on their way down the cliff, set falling by the people she saw at the top. One of them was the old man from the village, and the other was moving equally slowly. The two of them looked down at her and then took up their positions at the top of the path. She walked past a gull that turned out to be only feathers and a beak, not knowing where she was walking to, not knowing whether the stones would let her climb away from the beach. There was something alive on the beach after all, she remembered thinking, and knew that she’d been right, although she hadn’t meant the stones. Older than her, older than anyone. The statues: had someone put them there, or were they the rock trying to get inland, trying to move into new times? She didn’t know. The rock she’d watched Neil examining lay close by, quietly, like a shaggy dog sleeping. The design the pebbles made shifted and shifted, reshaped by the waves that fell like suicides from cliffs. For a moment it was clear, and she knew that she did not belong there and had been terribly wrong to think that she did, and then a noise broke her concentration and she turned to walk to the path. The noise, above her, sounded again; a gull crying as it passed over her. The gull cried again as though it was mocking her, as it rode a thermal out away from the land. She watched it go and knew that it hadn’t been mocking her, knew that it didn’t care enough to mock; and she knew that she was lost, on holiday without a phrasebook in a land with no language she knew, lost in a country which, like the gull, did not care. She hoped she’d have time to cry, if the beach would let her go; hoped she’d be able to cry, one day, for Neil. If the borders were open, she thought, then perhaps she’d get home; and there she’d have time to grieve. Then the gull and the moment and the time for thinking passed, and she began to walk.
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