Jim Crace: The Gift of Stones

I had imagined … naturally, who wouldn’t? … that, given time, the pumping buttocks in the grass would be my own. And not for trade in hens. Now once again the simple sum of my ambition was not to kill a horseman but to be a horseman — though shooting arrows of a different kind. Fat chance.

I turned my back. I put the baby on her mat. I tied the dog. I released the chicken from its twine. I set it free. The child began to cry; the dog to whimper, then to bark. The hen took off. And so did I. I walked down to the shore and found the overhang of heath where I had sat and smashed the rocks one day before. I waited there. But she did not come. I searched the skyline for a ship. No ship. I set my face against the wind and almost ran. It was not yet dusk when I reached the bracken path above our village. Had I been missed? The plumes of smoke were lifting from the workshop fires. There was the pant of bellows. The air was prickly with the click of stone on stone. My people were at work. I felt as if my life was cursed with failure and misfortune.’

‘“WHERE HAVE you been?” my uncle shouted. He had become a trader in the spring of that same year. While his sons and daughters laboured in the workshops — and while his mutilated nephew roamed at will — he had found himself a spot in the circle of transaction at the centre of the village. His flints, arranged upon a mat, were crude and cheap and plentiful. His trading pitch was just as rough. His voice was rasping, his chest was full of chalk — flint-knapper’s lung, they called it. Between the spits and coughs, he holla’d and he crowed at any passing farmer with eggs to trade. Or any girl with cloth. Or any craftsman loaded down with pots or baskets. He’d found his talent. He’d been placed on earth to strut and shout. He was the market’s cock.

So, the “Where have you been?” which greeted me on my return was not a question seeking answers, a demonstration of concern. It was a piece of drama for the mongers and the pedlars there. Gather round, it said. We’ll have some fun — and while we’re at it we’ll do a little business, too.

“You see? He has no answers,” uncle said, pulling me to his side so that all of those who looked at me would see his axe-heads too.

“Where has he been? He disappeared like that. No word. No by-your-leave. He spent the night … who knows? Some girl, I think!” They laughed. “Some girl who should be warned. Perhaps, at night, she didn’t notice that his hugs comprised of just one arm. He had to add a leg, maybe. He stroked her with his toes. I promise you these flints, these best stone tools, are not the work of toes…” And he embarked upon his well-rehearsed display.

He tried it once again that night, for the benefit of all my cousins. “Where were you, then?” he said. I had a question unspoken on my lips, too. Did anyone remember a stranger and two boys? A dog? They came with eggs and kale and tasty saltland rabbits. Once — one, two years ago — they had some whale to trade. Did anyone recall three bodies on the outskirts of the village? Were there rumours of that kind? Did anyone recall?

“I met a woman…”I began.

“Ah!” My cousins sniggered as they ate. “I’ll bet she was a beauty … with four hooves and horns!”

“I met a woman…”I repeated.

“Let’s have her name,” said uncle, cheapened by the easy laughs he’d earned that afternoon. “We ought to let her know, poor girl, that those cuddles that you gave her in the night were done with just one hand. You had to lift a leg and stroke her with your toes.” His repetition was worthwhile. It earned him some applause. He rose and left us to it. But my cousins were entrapped.

“Who was this woman? Where…? Come on. Speak up.”

That was an invitation far too good to miss. I’d tell them all about the old reed hut behind the sea, about the woman and her family and her child, the damp, her poverty, her food. Perhaps — at night, before the dancing flames it didn’t seem unlikely — they’d share my sense of sorrow at what went on in the world beyond the hill, the world that had no stone.

But, first, I had to tell them all about the cliff, the beach, the ship upon the sea.

“What would you have done,” I asked, “if I had come to you and said, Put down your tools, I’ve seen a ship? You’d tell me, Scram. You’d call me Little Liar!” They laughed at that. They recognized the truth. “And, anyway, that ship would soon be out of sight. Unless, of course, I followed it. Why shouldn’t I? I had no work to do. I simply filled my chest with air and took off down the coast.”

My cousins had stopped eating. Their eyes were turned on me. Those phrases — “filled my chest” and “took off down the coast” — had made them hopeful in a way they could not understand. Those phrases were like perfume. They had dramatic odours. They promised more. I knew at once the truth could not be told to them. It was too dull and disappointing. No love, poor food, a woman — thin and naked, with breasts like barnacles — who sold herself for chickens. What could I say to make it sound attractive? They wanted something crafted and well turned. I wanted their applause. The truth would never do. It was too fragile and too glum. It offered no escape.

“The sea seen from the clifftop is a world that’s upside down,” I began. I stood and spread my long arm and my short to demonstrate the view I had. I pointed down.

“The gulls have backs. You’re looking down on wind. The shallows, from above, are flat and patterned, green with arcs of white where the water runs to phlegm. My ship threw up an arc of its own phlegm as it dipped and bounced before the wind. I bounced and dipped myself. We were a pair.”

This is my moment of betrayal, both of the woman and the truth. Hear how it comes to life. See my cousins, sitting there, their chins aglow with grease, their eyes on fire, their expectations high, their dreams and nightmares on display.

“I caught the ship,” I said. “It came ashore.”

I told them all about the coastline, how the cliffs died out and sank so that the heathland and the beach were clasped like fingers of two hands. I told them how the white sail of the ship was forced to labour against the tide, of how I waited hidden in a cove where the rocks were elderberry red and elderberry soft. They looked delighted when I said I’d meant to bring some red stone back for them to see, but had forgot. I’d bring some for them in a day or two. They laughed out loud. They loved — and feared — the nerve and challenge of the storyteller’.

WE BEGGED my father to repeat for us the story that he told that night to his audience of cousins. What happened when the ship reached shore? Were there men on board or what? What was the cargo that they brought? He claimed he was not sure, that stories were like dreams, like dragonflies. They came and went. They only gave one show. His cousins might remember. But he could not. Besides, he’d told a hundred versions since — and no two were quite the same.

We have heard my father talking — and we know the way he worked. We know that when he spoke he shaped the truth, he trimmed, he stretched, he decorated. He was to truth what every stoney was to untouched flint, a fashioner, a god. We know that when he said, ‘I’ll keep it simple too, I won’t tell lies,’ that this was just another arrow from his shaft by which we were transfixed. And so, again, we should beware when father claimed forgetfulness and said ‘Who knows what story I dished up for them that night? Who cares? He knew, for sure. It was a turning-point for him — though, here again, his version was much tidier than truth. His version said that that one tale, told late at night to cousins, had kicked the anthill once again. He’d startled everyone; he’d surprised himself. It was as if the village fool had, unannounced, stood up and juggled perfectly — or the stammerer had sung a faultless song. It was a revelation and a shock that in the village, hidden, uncultivated all these years, there had been this amputee, who now could hold a household silent with the magic of his words.