The Stone Read online

Getting up from the bench on the cliff-top, Edmund walked back to his Morgan parked nearby in a small car park. The two honeymooners were well out of sight by now, and he smiled to himself as he fired the powerful engine into life and pointed the little sports car towards home. Several villages sped by as he drove deeper into the New Forest National Park. Driving through the last village before home, and before the deep woods gave way to open country; the little Morgan turned sharp right down a hidden lane.

  The entrance to the lane was somewhat overgrown and being situated right on a sharp bend, any road users would quite easily miss the turn, having to concentrate on the road with no time to look right. Forest walkers did not frequent this area of the road, as it was quite narrow and risky with oncoming traffic.

  At the entrance to the lane and well covered by thick ivy and bramble, and with great effort, you could uncover a wooden carved signpost marked ‘Red Cottage’.

  The little Morgan bounced on the rutted lane and lurched around a few bends, until at last a small thatch came into view covering the squat red brick walls of the cottage. A single light emanated from the small window facing the lane, an oil table lamp with a Tiffany style shade made a soft welcome for him.

  He slowly edged the car around the back of the cottage and it came to rest under a small lean-to for protection from the elements. A short sharp bark from inside the back door relaxes him, and as he opens the door out jumps a silver grey border collie already holding his lead and looking up at him pleadingly with pale blue eyes, common for this colour of collie.

  ‘OK Zowie, let’s go.’ Edmund grabbed on old walking stick fashioned from an unusual twisted sapling, a result of some creative carving. He re-locked the back door and headed into the undergrowth, there’s no discernible path, but Zowie raced ahead knowing exactly where they were going.

  On the way, the dog periodically darted this way and that, following the scent of some animal that had recently crossed their path, but a short whistle brought her back and she assumed the role of obedient companion. After about an hour she raced off into the distance, but he was not alarmed, as they were approaching their intended destination.

  The thickly grown leafless winter trees gave way to an open area, where the receding sun was reflected on the dark water of a small pond, almost circular with a diameter of about thirty feet. The atmosphere created by this area was of a peaceful silence, and looking to the right near the edge of the pond, a sturdy rustic bench awaited him, and at the closest end of it, sat the collie patiently awaiting her master.

  Resting on the bench, after clearing the leaves and debris blown on it during the day he allowed his soul to absorb the quietness, and time just about stood still. This little beauty spot had been his joy over the years, and the pleasure of having it all for himself, was like a gift from God. Yet not very far from this very spot, campers and hikers would be struggling to find anywhere at all that comes near to its beauty, as overcrowding was becoming the problem for this new National Park.

  After what seems a few minutes to them, (in fact probably more than an hour had passed), Edmund’s sharp hearing picked up the stronger rustling of the surrounding trees, sure in the knowledge that as the weak sun dipped below the tree line, dusk was approaching and it was best to make a move. The dog had already sensed Edmund’s mental decision to begin the return journey; she jumped up and ran in the direction from whence they came to the pond.

  The water in the pond had become even blacker as the light had faded and the soft silence was now punctuated by the rustling of the branches above his head. The decision was made more quickly by the thought of the open log fire lighting up the main room, and the food he needed to cook. Having not eaten for some time now, it spurred him on.

  In order not to make a single pathway from the cottage to the secret pond, Edmund took a different route back. This entailed taking several detours around impenetrable thickets and black swampy areas known only to him, however, he treated them with respect.

  The dog raced ahead at times, almost guiding the man, giving him assurance in the fading light. About halfway into the journey though, he caught up with her standing stock still, looking ahead and making a little whining sound. As Edmund followed her gaze to where the dog was looking, about twenty yards ahead, there was a small copse of silver birch. He noticed some sort of movement between the tree trunks like a black shadow. He blinked, stared again and held his breath. Then it was gone.

  The silence was deafening, so silent he could hear his own heartbeat. Did he see something? Was it a trick of the light? Who knows? ‘Come Zowie’ he pushed hard on the walking stick and quickly made for home, the dog firmly at his heel.

  A little breathless, he reached the back garden of the cottage and instinctively scanned around for any sign of an intruder - nothing. The Morgan continued to rest under the awning, and a little beyond he could just make that a Toyota Hi Ace pickup, with a somewhat beat up bodywork, perfect for use out here during the wild winter months. He made a mental note to fire up the Toyota’s engine tomorrow, although he didn’t worry as, in his view, the old pickup is still undoubtedly, the most reliable four-wheeled vehicle in the world. Anyway, in his experience, Morgan sports cars are not that keen on heavy going Forest roads in the winter months.

  He opened the cottage door and Zowie darted in.

  ‘First job is to get the fire going and fire-up the stove’ he thought to himself. The stove was an old wood-burner, no gas or electricity connected out here, and so therefore, no connection means no bills. All one had to be is self-sufficient, and with a large helping of imagination; a comfortable life can easily be achieved. However, living the life of a recluse in the twenty first century can be somewhat difficult, especially when you are past retirement age. One can’t avoid contact with essential people and services. Even if you don’t have the need to pay the usual bills, money had to be managed and mail had to be dealt with.

  The local post office staff was very helpful, all the mail addressed to him was held for collection with a standing order to them, that if a month had passed without contact, someone comes by and checks. His income is sourced through a normal bank account, which is of course well managed and has never required any correspondence.

  ‘Funny!’ he suddenly thought, ‘I have been here now for nearly ten years, and it’s the first time that I actually feel lonely, or is it the fact that I’m actually now getting old?’

  It’s not long before the logs are burning in the grate, and the added warmth of the stove is working its magic on their simple food. Within the hour Edmund is sitting outstretched on his comfortable leather chair, with Zowie lying across his feet, and it’s now that he finds the time to think back over the days’ events.

  He knew that the stone had been passed on to its new owner as foretold to him many years ago, when he himself became the guardian of it. He was still amazed at its mighty power, not the power over him, but the power to show him opportunities on the journey of life. It was not therefore with sadness that he passed it on, but with grateful joy that it had been his companion for so long.

  Thinking about it more deeply maybe he should have said a little more about the stone to the young blonde woman, but perhaps she might have been somewhat frightened if he had though. Still it wouldn’t be long until events might become self-evident. Perhaps some of the knowledge will be revealed to her, but there will be no doubt, some nice surprises in store for her.

  It was already quite dark outside and the memory of the strange shadow in that copse of birch trees made him shudder a little, so he stared into the wood embers, which again reminded him of that first job, and the fires that raged in the Coke Ovens plant.

  4: Baptism of Fire

  Pushing the coke

  The young Accounts Clerk soon settled into his new job at the works offices; even the Dickensian environment soon became normal; the three co-inhabitants soon tolerated him as long as he fell into the expected ‘pecking order’

  His immediate senior,
John, was a quiet and meek individual. He seemed to perfectly fit into the character of Bob Cratchet, in Dickens’s Christmas Carol. He was guardedly nervous as if he was being watched constantly, and of course he was – from the opposite corner, by Harold. A small crippled man of harsh disposition who didn’t seem to outwardly like anyone. Maybe he was that way due to his physical disability but one could only assume that, as no discussion of any personal nature ever came from his thin lips. Dickens came to Edmund’s aid again when he looked at Harold; he became Uriah Heep in ‘David Copperfield’. The only difference between Harold and Uriah was that the real character used to sit on the table sometimes and he never saw Harold manage that.

  John told Edmund to call him Mr. Thompson for now, not wanting him to invoke one of those withering stares that were commonplace from old Heep.

  The third member of the ‘team’, a large ginger headed man, somewhat younger than the other two, rose up from his desk and came over to where Edmund was, and although his demeanour seemed somewhat of a superior nature, he did have a warm smile. He introduced himself as Mr Campion and he was the assistant of George Ward. He looked over to the closed door on the left facing him, marked ‘Works Manager’ George in turn was subordinate to the man behind the door to the right, marked ‘M. Newman, Director’.

  Edmund’s exam results were better that average, at the local grammar school, which was the source of great pride to his parents; it was very clear however that the ‘brains’ of the family was undoubtedly his mother. Way before Edmund was born she was quite an accomplished pianist, but after a quick relationship, she was forced to marry his father, being caught pregnant. No single mothers in those days were tolerated, and no one could stand the shame of it.

  Soon faced with the task of bringing up three children and with miner’s pay merely covering the household costs, the opportunities for a concert pianist were non-existent. She recognised early on in Edmund’s school life, that he had a flair for mathematics and therefore sought to make an opportunity available, to raise him above the harsh life that her husband and his two other siblings were forced to endure.

  He knew that his mother’s advice to him before setting foot in the new job would be priceless, so with that he wouldn’t be like a ‘lamb to the slaughter’. His mother made it clear that Office Juniors tasks were always menial ones, but starting from the bottom of the ladder in an office was a thousand times better than the factory floor as endured by his sister and brother. So he was well prepared to make tea and run errands, in order to hopefully get somewhere in life.

  Apart from the menial tasks, over a period of time he was given his own tasks, one of which was to liaise with the next-door Laboratory staff, collecting and collating data for Mr Campion. The Laboratory was in fact the quality control for the plant and most of the work the technicians did was to test samples of all the chemicals and by-products from the coke making.

  It seemed much easier to communicate with the laboratory technicians than with his clerical colleagues, most would pass the time of day, and one of them often tried to get into a deeper conversation except that it was frowned upon by the strict regime, which prevailed.

  One morning Mr Campion asked Edmund to speak to the supervisor of the Lab, and ask him to designate one of his staff to show him around the plant, and take with him some blank circular graphs. To Edmund’s surprise the supervisor asked the friendliest of the technicians to help. As he and the supervisor approached the seated man, he rose from his chair. A huge man was looking down on him. Six foot at least and built like a grizzly bear.

  ‘This is Dmitri’ the supervisor said, and told him to show Edmund around, explaining about the graphs the young man was holding. Dmitri leaned forward, pushed a great hairy arm out to shake his hand with a wide beaming smile on his face. After the introductions they set off into the works yard and headed towards the noise of the smoke- filled towers and black buildings.

  Edmund could feel the warmth of Dmitri’s voice, and immediately knew that they were going to be friends. He knew the names of all of the machines and what they did. Many of the operatives, all dressed in heavy protective clothing, knew Dmitri. Some stopped to speak to him, not in English, laughing as they looked at the diminutive young man accompanying him, but Edmund didn’t feel embarrassed, as he felt quite comfortable and safe with this big man.

  They started to climb some mezzanine steps and walk along the raised steel walkway. The sights and sounds of the huge Battery that constitutes the beginning of the process were awesome. It was a box-like structure about thirty feet high and consisted of about twenty narrow doors about two feet wide and as high as the structure itself. As they proceeded along the raised pathway, he was to witness something that would stick in his mind as long as he lived.

  Halfway along the battery, an operator appeared with a long metal pole. With the pole he opened a latch on one of the doorways, which immediately flew open revealing a crimson band of fire. Edmund had to shield his eyes and the immense heat flushed his unsuspecting face. The crimson mass began to edge out of the doorway towards the heavy chain secured across its path. The hot burning lava like material moved out quicker, and the heavy chain began to make the fiery column break and fall into a huge hopper wagon waiting below. The screaming broken fiery mass continued to fall into the wagon until the end of the ‘pusher’ could be seen in the doorway indicating the end of that process.

  The worker deftly closed the narrow door and with a loud bang, and locked the latch shut The whole operation took less than thirty seconds, and they then watched a small locomotive pull the smouldering wagon away to the right on its way to a huge brick tower and through its cavernous archway, stopping when the wagon was directly under the tower.

  Looking ahead at the huge Battery and upwards he could make out shadowy figures moving about on top. ‘How the hell can anyone be working on top of that?’ He shouted at Dmitri.

  Dmitri smiled down at the young man. ‘They’re used to it, just doing their job, and some have been doing the same thing for twenty years!’ He laughed loudly. ‘Mostly they are Iti’s, prisoners of war, who didn’t return back and they have made a home here and married some of your English girls.’

  His voice was drowned out by a claxon horn from the tower, and then huge amounts of water began falling from it on to the fiery wagon, causing a huge amount of smoke and steam to be drafted up the tower and into the sky.

  ‘That’s two thousand degrees to one hundred and fifty degrees in thirty seconds, which is how we make the coke!’ Dmitri said.

  Edmund noticed that all that smoke and steam emanating from the top of the tower was being blown directly onto the row of houses next to the plant. Yet in their back gardens, the housewives were displaying the results of their morning’s washing.

  ‘How often does this happen?’ He asked Dmitri

  Dmitri rubbed his bristly chin. ‘About every half hour’ he said.

  Dmitri proceeded to show Edmund where to place all the circular graphs, replacing the previous day ones. They were all over the works, some in the Battery and others in the wide-ranging by-product area each in their own glass cabinets.

  He explained in great detail to the young accounts junior the amazing workings of the Woodall Duckham designed coke oven plant, which was installed not long before the 1914-18 war, when the initial production was for bomb making. At that time not many people were aware of the incredible uses that were made from the by-products of the amazing black gold – coal!

  The coke itself having gone through the quenching process was then shipped by the internal rail system to the four blast furnaces as fuel for the smelting of iron ore which was shipped in from the ore fields both in the UK and abroad. Both the coke making and the smelting processes worked 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year, hence the need for huge numbers of operatives working on a continuous shift programme.

  The whole instruction from Dmitri took most of the day and when they returned to base it was obvious to Edmund’s coll
eagues that he had learned so much, that there was no need to question or doubt the value of the time spent with Dmitri. In fact he had learnt so well that even the next day, he was able to replace and retrieve all of the graphs without any further help.

  Edmund and Dmitri had become firm friends after that, and Edmund was well pleased to be invited to the local pub, the Iron Man, at lunchtime by a group of Lab technicians including Dmitri. To get to the pub, all they had to do was leave the factory gates and walk up Old Compton Street, which was flanked by two rows of terraced houses. Amazingly, these were the same houses that got continuously enveloped by the huge cloud of smoke and steam emanating each thirty minutes from the quencher tower.

  At the top of the hill there was a small corner shop, the Iron Man Pub and a brick built church with a squat tower. The whole walk, from the plant to the pub would take him about five minutes, and it was most comforting to open the public bar door and be welcomed by smiling faces and a drink on the table waiting for him. Someone had selected a record on the little jukebox, Edmund recognised it as Frank Ifield’s ‘I remember you’.

  ‘Where do you come from Dmitri?’ he asked. ‘Are you Russian?’

  ‘No Edmund, I’m Polish, but before I came here I was in Russia, in fact it was Siberia, and I was a political prisoner.’ He showed him the tattoo on his forearm, a long string of numbers still visible. ‘Every prisoner has one of these and no amount of washing will get it off.’