The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner Page B

to take them off. They’re crippling me.’
    ‘Worse could happen,’ said Grandad. ‘Bad shoes have saved my life.’
    ‘How?’ said William.
    ‘In Kaiser Bill’s war,’ said Grandad. ‘I went for me medical, along with all the other youths from this shop; Tommy Latham, David Peters and them. But the army doctor said as how he reckoned they could manage without me. He said, “You’ve hammer toes.” And I said, “What do you expect? I’m a smith!” But it was a terrible rough auction, was Kaiser Bill’s war. Men were going thick and threefold. Like water down a ditch.
    ‘They’re all on the Memorial at Saint Philip’s. George Powell, Oliver Leah, the Burgesses; Fred, Jim, Percy, Reg. And me own half-brother, Charlie. He’s there. And he was the one me Mother reared. For that.’
    The forge was low, but warm enough to chill William’s clothes with melting.
    The all-clear sounded. William and Grandad looked through the window, criss-crossed with strips of brown paper against blast. The blizzard had stopped.
    ‘I brought these down from up home this morning,’ said Grandad.
    He went to a row of vices clamped to a bench. In the vices were two strips of iron, about six feet long, and bevelled on one side. Grandad had drilled holes in each strip and countersunk them.
    ‘Get on the bellows, youth,’ he said.
    William began to work the lever handle of the forge bellows up and down. It was as though the cellar was waking, breathing. The coals glowed more brightly, and blue gasses licked around them.
    Up and down, up and down. The warmth came back.
    ‘Steady,’ said Grandad. ‘We’re not the Queen Elizabeth, nor Chapel organ, neither. Steady. Keep her going gentle.’
    He held an end of one of the strips in the forge. When the end was cherry red he lifted it over to his swage block.
    In all Grandad’s forge and cellar there was nothing like the swage block. It was a square, thick slab, too heavy for William even to move, but Grandad could move it. Its edges were indented, but each indentation was a different size, a different shape. They were slots, for bevels or angles. And the block itself was pierced by squares and circles, so that the weight looked light, and in one corner was a hollow, a circular dish when the block lay that way.
    It was a shape older than anvils.
    Yet it was only a block of iron, to be used any side up, for anything that was useful.
    Grandad put the hot end into a hole in the swage block, and pulled down until the strip began to bend. He drew it out a short way, and bent it again. The metal was losing its colour.
    ‘Now,’ said Grandad. ‘Give her a good un! Come on! Queen Elizabeth, Chapel and all!’
    The lever went up and down, and William with it.
    The forge roared. Grandad held the strip with long pincers and paddled it in the fire. He kept looking at the bellows handle, as if he was measuring it, but most of the time he was watching the heated iron.
    ‘You’ll often wonder why a smith works in the dark,’ he said, ‘and here’s why. It’s nothing dubious. You can’t judge colour if the sun’s putting your fire out. It’s pale straw we’re after; pale straw, and not a touch lighter. See!’
    He pulled out the strip. Where he had bent it in the swage block was yellow but not white. He moved quickly now and turned the rough bend in the hollow cup, pressing but not forcing the softened iron to the perfect curve, so that the cup in the block gave its shape to his hand. Then he laid the strip aside. It changed from straw to cherry.
    ‘We’ll not need to quench it,’ he said. l Grandad took the second strip and did the same to that as he had done to the first, until the two were side by side, identical.
    ‘Leave her now,’ he said to William. ‘She’ll do.’
    The fire receded. Grandad flicked the swage block clean with the end of his leather brat, and wiped his face. He sat with William by the forge and drew two cups of beer from the barrel he kept under his