the peace that must descend here in the fall, when the only sounds were the stream clattering over its slate shelves and the raucous complaints of seagulls, when the air held the tang of smoke from coal fires in cottage hearths, when the only people along the pavements knew one another by their given name.
The coastal fog was beginning to break up; it promised to be another fair day. He stood at the edge of the car park where he was to meet his instructor, watched the river race past, and thought about Nicola. She intrigued him. Yes, she was right; they had been flirting. But there was an awfully sharp edge to her flirtation. It wasn't that she was caustic, really, or even sarcastic. But her teasing was prickly. She reminded him of the blackberry bramble bushes that overran empty lots in Philadelphia in the summer: the berries were irresistibly plump, sweet, and juicy, but the thorns lacerated you when you collected them. You could learn a lot about desire from a blackberry bramble.
Desire. He hadn't felt any for months. But Nicola had resurrected it. It wasn't even the flirty banter, though that had been fun, in a vaguely dangerous way. After all, it had been a very long time since he'd had a date. He didn't even know how to go about starting and wasn't even sure he could. Or should. It wasn't that he still loved Kat; she'd made sure he wouldn't. No, it was that he kept replaying in his head the charges she'd leveled against him; they swirled around in there like harpies. Was he too intellectual? Too controlled? Did he lack ambition, or was he simply happy teaching? Or were all those charges just the weapons she used to justify her affair and defection? In the year since she'd left, Andrew had felt as if he'd been treading water. Or just marking time. Maybe he'd become self-absorbed. Or maybe he was just so badly flayed by Kat's leaving that he was bleeding still.
But there was that galvanic shock when Nicola touched his hand. It amazed him. It confused him. It nagged at him. What was that about?
A few cars had turned into the nearly empty car park and a little knot of men was gathering by the slate-stone Visitor Centre. Andrew wandered over to join them.
“Morning! We all waiting for the teacher?” he said.
He received two curt nods and one “I reckon.” Men of few words.
“Where're you from?” asked the talkative one, a wiry, balding fellow of perhaps thirty-five with a sharp, ferretlike face. Andrew's accent had given him away.
“Philadelphia,” he answered.
Three pairs of eyes widened. Finally, another of the men, a tall, heavily built fellow in manure-splattered green rubber wellies and blue coveralls, looked him over.
“Bettur fit yew staid 'ome, lad; no 'oliday, this. This be 'ard lowster.”
Andrew stared at the man for a moment, smiling what he was sure was an idiot's smile, while he waited for his brain to translate. He thought he got the gist.
“Yeah, reckon it will be,” he answered, shrugging to suggest hard work was nothing new to him.
Now the third gent spoke up; it was becoming a real gabfest. “There's a lot of fine stonework around Philadelphia; it was the Pennsylvania Dutch, was it not?”
Andrew looked at this fellow in frank amazement. How would he know that? The man seemed overdressed for the task ahead: neatly pressed denim shirt with a button-down collar, sharply creased khaki trousers, and what looked like brand-new work boots. He looked like a Bostonian, sounded like a Londoner, and was certainly no Cornishman. He extended his hand to Andrew.
“Ralph Newsome; I studied engineering at Drexel for a year.”
“Andrew Stratton; I teach architecture at Penn.”
“Small world,” Newsome said.
The ferret didn't want to be left out. “Jacob Casehill,” he said, taking Andrew's hand. “Stonemason. Everyone calls me Case.”
The three of them turned to the big fellow, who suddenly seemed as shy as a child.
“Burt. Pencarrow. Farmin' out Holsworthy way.” He kept his hands in the pockets of his coveralls.
It was at this point that a beat-up white van lurched into the car park. On the side of the van was written THE STONE ACADEMY.
The teacher's name was Jamie Boden, and Andrew had expected, given the diminutive first name, a young spark of a fellow. But the man who climbed down out of the van was, Andrew guessed, at least sixty, his face weathered, freckled, and deeply creased, his head crowned with a wild tangle