twisted the spike with his hands against the wind, and the spike moved in its greased socket, shaking a bit, juddering, but firm. To Mary the weathercock was waking. The world turned. Her bonnet fell off and hung by its ribbon, and the wind filled her hair.
‘Faster! Faster!’ she shouted. ‘I’m not frit!’ She banged her heels on the golden sides, and the weathercock boomed.
‘Who-whoop! Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o!’ cried Father. The high note of his voice crossed parishes and townships. Her hair and her bonnet flew, and she felt no spire, but only the brilliant gold of the bird spinning the air.
Father swung the tail as it passed him. ‘Who-whoop! Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o! There’s me tip-top pickle of the corn!’
Mary could see all of Chorley, the railway and the new houses. She could have seen home but the Wood Hill swelled and folded into Glaze Hill between. She could see the cottage at the edge of Lifeless Moss, and the green of the Moss, and as she spun she could see Lord Stanley’s, and Stockport and Wales, and Beeston and High Billinge and Delamere, and all to the hills and Manchester. The golden twisting spark with the girl on top, and everywhere across the plain were churches.
‘Churches! I can see churches!’
And all the weathercocks turned in the wind.
Father let the spike stop, and lifted her down.
‘There,’ he said. ‘You’ll remember this day, my girl. For the rest of your life.’
‘I already have,’ said Mary.
Father ate his baggin. Mary walked round the platform. She looked at the new vicarage and the new school by the new church.
‘Are you wishing?’ said Father.
‘A bit,’ said Mary. ‘I’m wishing I’d went.’
‘It’d be fourpence a week, and all the time you’d have lost.’
‘I could have read,’ said Mary. ‘You can read.’
She sat with her back against the steeple in its narrow shade. Glaze Hill was between her boots. ‘Have you asked if Lord Stanley’ll set me on?’
‘Lord Stanley doesn’t like his maids to read,’ said Father.
‘But have you?’
‘Wait a year.’
‘I’m fretted with stone picking,’ said Mary. ‘I want to live in a grand house, and look after every kind of beautiful thing you can think of: old things: brass.’
‘By God, you’ll find stone picking’s easier!’ The onion dropped off Father’s knife and thumb and floated down to the lawns of the church. It had so far to fall that there was time for it to wander in the air.
‘We’d best fetch that,’ said Father, ‘The vicar won’t have us untidy.’
He put Mary on the ladder and climbed outside her. Just as the sky and the steeple were inside the ladder, Mary was inside Father’s long arms that pushed him out from the rungs. He didn’t help her, but she felt free and safe and climbed as if there was no sky, no stone, no height.
She ran across the lawn and picked up the onion. Bits of it had smashed off and she nibbled them.
She stood with Father and looked up. The spire still toppled under the clouds.
‘She’ll do,’ said Father, and slapped the stone. ‘Yet she’ll never do.’
‘Why?’ said Mary.
‘She’s no church, and she’ll not be. You want a few dead uns against the wall for it to be a church.’
‘They’ll come.’
‘Not here,’ said Father. ‘There’s to be no burial ground. Just grass. And without you’ve some dead uns, it’s more like Chapel than Church. Empty.’
He ate his onion.
Mary went back to work. She looked at Saint Philip’s when she got to Lifeless Moss. Father was nearly at the top again. His arms were straight. He climbed balanced out from the stone.
She dipped a panshon of water in the spring and took some up to Mother. Mother was sleeping, but her hair was flat with sweat.
Old William was sweating at his loom. It was all clack. He had to watch the threads, and he couldn’t look to talk.
Mary worked till the sun was cool, then she carried her stones home and made the tea. She washed little Esther and put her to bed, and gave Mother her tea. Father came home.
‘That’s done,’ he said. He sat quietly in his chair. He was always quiet when the work was over, church or wall or garden.
After tea, Father went to see Mother. They talked, and he played his ophicleide to her. He played gentle tunes, not the ones for Sunday.
Mary cleared the table and washed the dishes. And when she’d finished she cleaned the stones from the field. Old William smoked half a pipe of tobacco before going back to the loom.
‘Is he playing?’ said Old William.
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘But not Chapel. Why are we Chapel?’
‘You’d better ask him,’ said Old William. ‘I’m Chapel because it’s near. I do enough walking, without Sunday.’
Father came down from playing his music. He sat at the table with Mary and sorted the stones she had picked that day with little Esther. Most pickers left their stones on the dump at the field end, but Mary brought the best of hers home and cleaned the dirt off, and Father looked at them. In the field they were dull and heavy, and could break a scythe; but on the table each one was something different. They were different colours and different shapes, different in size and feel and weight. They were all smooth cobbles.
‘Why are we Chapel?’ said Mary.
‘We’re buried Church,’ said Father.
‘But why?’
‘There’s more call on music in Chapel,’ said Father.
‘Why?’
‘Because people aren’t content with raunging theirselves to death from Monday to Saturday, but they must go bawling and praying and fasting on Sundays too.’
‘What’s the difference between Church and Chapel?’ said Mary.
‘Church is Lord Stanley.’
‘Is that all?’
‘It’s enough,’ said Father. ‘When you cut stone, you see more than the parson does, Church or Chapel.’
‘Same as what?’
‘Same as this.’ Father took a stone and broke it. He broke it cleanly. The inside was green and grey. He took one half and turned so that Mary couldn’t see
