No Stone Unturned (11 page)

A little further along, they came into a clearing in front of an old tumbledown shed. Although substantial in size, the shed looked as if it hadn't been opened in ages. Kelly had to admit it looked a bit creepy. She wondered if it was something to do with the quarry or the railway, and made a mental note to ask Ben.

Feeling a little uncomfortable, Kelly hurried on. This time it was she who was tugging on the lead, trying to discourage Tyson from stopping to sniff the ground every few steps. She was relieved when, a little closer to the canal, the path started to widen again and they could move more quickly through the vegetation.

More relaxed, Kelly started to mentally rehearse what she would say to Ben when she saw him, until she and Tyson were brought to an abrupt halt by a loud flapping of feathers, erupting from the long grass next to the path. Kelly ducked and Tyson lurched sideways as a pheasant flew just inches above their heads, emitting an ugly, squawking noise that reminded Kelly of a screeching rusty gate hinge.

‘Blimey! That made me jump out of my skin.' Kelly put one hand on her chest while she held tightly onto Tyson's lead with the other in case he tried to chase after it. ‘Stupid bird. Why did it wait until we were right on top of it? If it had just stayed there in the grass, we would never have known it was there, would we? We would have walked right past it.'

Tyson, who had been just as surprised as Kelly, wagged his tail as if he agreed with her.

Kelly couldn't see where the pheasant had fled to, but as she looked into the long grass into which it had disappeared, a solid dark shape caught her eye. Something she hadn't noticed before when coming this way. It looked like the top of a circle of stones, almost completely covered in ivy, poking out above the waist-high weeds. Curious, she picked up Tyson and waded through the grass to take a closer look. It was an old well, its wooden lid now rotten and split with age.

‘Wow! Look at this, Tyson,' she exclaimed. ‘I wonder how long this has been here.'

She put Tyson down on the ground and told him to sit while she leaned over and peered down through the cracks in the wood. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust but then she began to make out the moss-covered stones lining the shaft and then, way, way down at the bottom, what looked like the glint of a deep, dark pool, faintly illuminated by a thin shaft of sunlight beaming down through the broken wooden lid.

The air inside the well smelled musty, like rotting compost, and felt icy cool on Kelly's face. At first she was entranced by the way the flickering light danced about on the water down below, but then her blood ran cold. There was something else down there, she was sure of it. A flash of something solid. What on earth could it be? A water rat or something? A stick or plank of wood, perhaps, floating about? Was it still there? Had she imagined it? Without thinking, Kelly leaned further forwards until the tips of her toes were only just brushing the ground.

‘Kelly!'

Startled by the voice crying out behind her, Kelly pushed down on the wooden lid with both hands to propel her body round. There was a sickening cracking noise as her left hand broke through one of the rotten planks, sending splinters of wood raining down into the black void beneath her. Her body span and her hip slammed hard against the rim of the well.

‘Be careful!'

Gripping the cold stones with her right hand, Kelly pushed herself back up onto her feet. She blew out hard.

‘What the hell were you doing, Kel?'

It was Ben, breathless, his nose only a few centimetres from hers, eyes wide in alarm.

‘You called me Kel,' she said, so pleased to see him that she didn't think to answer his question. A broad smile spread across her face, breaking the tension, and Ben returned her grin.

The two of them held one another's gaze for a few moments, until Tyson shattered the silence by letting out three short little yaps to remind them that he was still there, keen to continue his walk.

‘Thank you,' stammered Kelly, taking a step backwards. ‘That probably wasn't very wise of me, was it?'

‘No, not really,' said Ben. ‘That whole lid could collapse at any moment. I thought you were going to fall in. But listen, about the last time we met. What I said. I didn't mean anything by it.'

‘No, I know. I over-reacted.'

‘Well, maybe just a little. I'm sure my parents would really like you. I'm sorry if I upset you.'

‘I'm sorry too, for flying off the handle. It's just that I'm so used to people jumping to conclusions about me that I sometimes jump to the wrong conclusions about them. I don't give people a chance.'

‘Friends again, then?' said Ben.

‘Friends? Oh we're more than that now,' replied Kelly, ‘We're partners
and
friends. Come on, let's find somewhere to sit down and talk. I've got lots to tell you.'

Ben led Kelly and Tyson along the rest of the path to the canal where the three of them flopped down on the grass at the side of the footbridge in the early evening sunshine. Kelly told him all about her history project and was delighted when he agreed to help her.

‘We could make it a joint project,' she suggested. ‘Do you think your mum would like that? It could be part of your history lessons, too?'

Ben nodded.

‘Besides,' Kelly continued. ‘I was thinking. Won't your parents know lots of other stuff about the history of this area, if they've lived here for so long? You said that the cottage had been in your family for years.'

‘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

B
efore 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.