Water, Stone, Heart - By Will North Page 0,32

trouble. After shoveling up and setting aside the layer of shillet, which, as Jamie had predicted, lay just beneath the turf, they found only a scrim of subsoil and, beneath that, solid shelves of slate. They called Jamie over.

“Figured as much,” he said. “We want the hedge growing out of the ground from its footing, not perched on top of it, but we work with what we've got. One bright spot: You won't have to dig so much. Let's dig where we can and clear the ledges smooth where we find them.”

They continued like this, Becky peeling sod and the rest of them clearing subsoil, while Jamie, working alone, maneuvered the biggest stones into the bucket of the Bobcat and dumped them along the edge of the car park, a couple of yards from the new trench. It soon became clear that Andrew and Ralph Newsome were in nothing like the shape Burt and the wiry Case were. They huffed and puffed while the other two shoveled and slung gravel and dirt without apparent strain. Becky, sweating just as much as the men in the muggy August heat, kept swinging her mattock, several yards ahead of them. They only stopped for water, which Jamie provided from a big blue insulated plastic barrel with a spigot.

By midafternoon, they'd begun laying the grounders. Jamie explained that the big footing stones had to tilt downward so that gravity would pull the higher levels of the hedge inward to the center.

“How much tilt?” Case asked him.

Jamie took a long-handled shovel and laid it on the ground with the blade facedown, the pointed tip facing toward the center of the trench. “Same angle as that blade.”

“Fair enough,” Case said. “But what about where we're laying directly on bedrock?”

“Then you'll have to find grounders that have a wedge shape that does the same thing.”

“Why can't we just shim them up to that angle?” Becky asked.

“Might have to in a few places,” Jamie answered. “But as much as possible, we want the grounders in contact with the ground. More stable that way.”

And so they began, using pry bars and planks to move the big stones to the edge of the trench.

“If you can move a stone a quarter inch, you can move it anywhere,” Jamie explained. “It's all in the leverage. We can roll a big stone end-to-end along its edge, or walk' it, once we've got it up high enough that we're at the center of its gravity.”

Once they had a footing stone poised at the edge, Jamie studied it closely for a moment, pivoting it so that its longest axis faced in toward the center. Then he let it drop. As they added new grounders, they used pry bars to lock the stones together and filled the spaces between with shillet for drainage, ramming it hard with a long iron ramming tool. Meanwhile, Jamie ran the Bobcat back and forth, bringing new grounder stones.

At about four-thirty, Jamie killed the Bobcat's engine and yelled, “All right, you lot, we'll leave it there till the morrow. First round at the Cobweb's on me!”

Andrew was thankful the Cobweb Inn was just on the other side of the car park. As they dragged themselves across the shimmering macadam, Jamie chattered on about the next day's lesson, but Andrew guessed the students weren't retaining much of it. They were all sweat-drenched, filthy, and weary.

Jamie, Burt, and Case, who had the farthest to drive, left after their first pint, Newsome and Becky after their second.

“Reck'n ah'll be orf t'me 'oosbund,” Becky said, mimicking Burt's thick Cornish accent. Andrew had had no idea she was married; she wore no ring. She clapped him on the back and strode out the door.

Flora had just come on duty and she made a beeline for Andrew.

“Don't you be flirtin' with yon Becky, me 'an'sum,” she whispered with a wink. “That husband of hers is a right terror.”

“I should think yon Becky would be terror enough, but we're only working together.”

“On the new hedge, I heard.”

“How'd you hear about that?”

“From Nicki. Saw her on the way t'work.”

“How'd she find out?”

“A little bird, I expect,” Flora said, smiling.

“Lee.”

Andrew was beginning to think the girl was the town crier.

“Thick as thieves, those two,” Flora said, with what to Andrew seemed just a touch of envy. He wasn't sure how old Flora was; late fifties, maybe. Unmarried. Never married? Hard to know. Loved children; probably never had any. Did everyone covet Lee?

“Another pint of Doom Bar, Drew?”

“Sure, but I