It was an easy thing to miss. I nearly walked right past it.

I was on a weekend hike in the hilly, wooded Chilterns with a walking group. Well, more than just a group really. Even those who weren’t my good pals were as familiar to me as putting on an old leather jacket. There were about a dozen of us ambling along at a decent pace through the beech woods, those glorious smooth-as-bark elephant-grey trunks reaching for the sky, a cathedral of sorts, naves and vaulted ceilings showering October leaves like confetti.

I was so taken by the beauty of this scene that, eyes still on the canopy, I accidentally kicked something with my left foot. There was a clattering sound as it made contact with others of its kind. I picked it up. It was a piece of flint and, at first glance, it seemed unremarkable, just like any old rock you’d have kicked with a worn-out hiking boot. Then I studied it more closely. It was about the size of my palm and relatively flat, perhaps less than an inch in width. Mostly spherical, almost oval, a chalky white on one side and classic charcoal grey-black on the other with a part of the surface glistening like baby stars. But what truly grasped me were the edges, the beautiful, unnaturally formed, razor-sharp edges forming an almost complete circle. A small part of the flint had been neatly and evenly chipped away forming a straight and smooth edge. This made it easy to grasp in the hand of an adult.

It was impossible for me to imagine that this extraordinary piece of flint was anything but a man-made tool. How could it not be a cutting implement, a scraper or a primitive blade? I didn’t know much about pre-historic people. I really couldn’t distinguish between palaeolithic or neolithic or any other ‘ithic’.  But the tool – and I was convinced that it really was a tool – pushed my imagination into overdrive. I could hold this extraordinary utensil in the palm of my hand and millennia would fall away. I envisaged the entrance to a large cave and a wood fire illuminating the faces of those around it. A shaggy, bearded muscular man or, more likely, a fur clad female, carving up the meat of a slaughtered antelope, cutting through the skin and flesh with practiced strokes. The innards such as the liver or heart are, perhaps, consumed raw while blood-soaked slabs of meat and limbs are cooked over the fire. They speak to each other in the first crude rudiments of language but most of the tribe quietly attend to their roles using the tools they have carefully shaped from the living core of the land on which they live.

All of this I saw in my mind’s eye. I was holding a carefully carved tool used by other human beings thousands of years ago. It was a kind of magic really.

I put the piece of flint in my pocket, quite carefully so the sharp edges wouldn’t tear the fabric of my coat. Then I joined the gang to continue the walk.

*

That evening, the group met up in the grounds of the hostel and sat ourselves around a fire pit. We were a mixed bunch of men and women, fond of the outdoors and the simple things in life. Our age range was mostly 40’s to 50’s. We came to these events non-attached; we were kindred spirits who liked to walk not a dating club. The sole exception to this rule was Jeanette, a laugh-out-loud chatty single parent, who frequently brought along her nine-year-old son, Luke, on the walks.

It isn’t mandatory to like all children and I didn’t like this one. Luke was grumpy, demanding, perpetually bored (which wasn’t entirely his fault) mouthy and spoilt. The others tended to indulge him somewhat like an altruistic bunch of second-hand uncles and aunts, but I wasn’t inclined to play along. I was never unkind to the boy, but I didn’t warm to his various antics.

So, the group chatted, laughed, sang a little, mocked each other’s petty foibles and knocked back the booze. The fire was blazing away nicely. It was the primal heart of our gathering, the vibrant flames illuminating our faces.

I interrupted the proceedings. “Hey, guys, take a look at this” I announced, pulling the flint out of my pocket and displaying the rock like a sizeable piece of gold. “I found it in the forest.” I passed it over to Matty sitting on my left. “I reckon it’s some sort of stone age tool. What d’you think?”

Matty, a coach driver from Reading, studied it for a few seconds, felt the sharp edge, shrugged and muttered “Could be anythin’. He passed it on to his neighbour. One by one, they handled this painstakingly crafted flint tool and regarded it with as much concern as though it were a pebble on a beach. Rita studied it a little more closely and ventured “Oh, I dunno, it doesn’t look all that natural to me.” She smiled. “Maybe it really was made by Ug the Neanderthal.”

Pretty much the entire group dismissed my flint as nothing more than a piece of rock just like any other. The only one who hadn’t yet seen it was young Luke.

Half asleep and snuggled beneath a fleece, he was awoken by his mother who always tried to involve him in the group’s activities. “Lukey”, she nudged him. “Lukey, have a look at this.”

Blinking himself awake, he grasped the flint in his nine-year-old hands, looked at it for a few moments, touched its surface and sharp edge, then held it up to the firelight. He half-smiled at his mother. Luke seemed transfixed by the flint, hypnotised by it. At that moment, he reminded me of someone. He reminded me of myself.

“What d’you think o’ that? Luke” asked Jeanette. “Roy thinks it was made by a caveman.”

He grinned than suddenly got up and began dancing around the fire, in heavy leaden steps, waving the flint about in the air as if it were a weapon. “Raaaaaghhhh! I’m a caveman, I’m a caveman” he shouted into the night as he performed some strange ritual from his dark imaginings.

The group cheered him on while Jeanette laughed and gave a loud one-off clap.

I decided to politely ask for it back when….

“Mum”, asked Luke, plaintively. “I want it. Can I have it?”

“You’ll have to ask Roy” she replied, looking at me intently. “I’m sure he’ll give it to you if you ask nicely.”

“Well, I-I….the thing is, Luke, it’s really not-

-“Roy” said Luke, with that grim, determined expression I’d seen before. “I want it. I really want it.”

“Look, “I said, “it’s not just a plaything. It-

“-oh, for the love of Jesus, Roy” Jeanette blurted. “Just give him the bloody thing.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Matty, grinning. “Just give him the bloody thing.”

I decided to appeal to their better selves. “Look. Guys. This….this is more than just, well, more than a piece of flint. It’s a hand carved tool. It was crafted with care by human beings thousands of years ago. It was used by them to survive, to sustain life. It’s a direct link to our ancestors, to our past. It binds us to them. It-it’s a part of who we are.”

It was a good speech. There was a moment’s pause as they glanced at each other. Then they all burst out laughing.

I tried pleading with them.

“You don’t understand. This-this thing” I said, pointing to the flint still in Luke’s hand. “It’s precious to me.”

“Hey!” someone shouted. “Gollum’s lost his ‘precious’”

That really started them off and the copious quantities of beer and wine didn’t help.

“That nasty hobbitses Roy Baggins has my Precious”

“Dwayne Johnson better step down, mate. You’re ‘The Rock’ from now on.”

“Hey, Roy, what’s that flinty look you’ve got in your eye?”

Luke kept hold of the flint like his life depended on it.

Jeanette smiled like a small battle had been won.

I decided to bear it all with a bit of classic British stoicism. I smiled when required to smile. Took it on the chin. All of this while I watched, with a sideways glance, Luke once more tucked up under his blanket, studying the flint and, with the hardened expression of a neolithic huntsman pursuing a mammoth, clearly deciding that the tool in his hand was most definitely his.

In a fit of pique cunningly disguised as altruism, I relented.

“Alright, alright, you bastards. Luke can have the flint.”

I was disappointed that no-one had stuck up for me. We may have been friends for several years but they just didn’t understand my affinity for the flint. I guess some people have no poetry in their souls.

As for Luke, he was a restless callow child and I’m sure the tool would be discarded and forgotten about in no time at all.

“Cheers, Roy” said Jeannette. “Whatever makes the little man happy.”

The little man had fallen asleep. My gift from the prehistoric world had fallen to the ground and lay there, glinting in the firelight. I could reach over and grasp it, yet it seemed forever out of reach.

*

Over a decade passed by. I moved away to Wiltshire but still kept in touch with a few of the old crowd. Jeannette had moved up north and I’d completely lost touch with her.

I never really let go of that special piece of hand-carved flint. Sometimes I longed to feel the cold stone in the palm of my hand, touch its sharp edges with my finger and imagine, once again, primitive but resourceful human beings surviving through their ingenuity and determination. The tool had bound me to them.

I wondered briefly what had become of Luke. A grasping, self-centred boy of his disposition didn’t seem destined to go far in life and I imagined him, a little ungraciously, currently being fed and accommodated at His Majesty’s pleasure.

Then I received the invitation.

My old friend Rita was holding a 50th birthday party and she wanted me to come. I’d joined other rambling groups in my area but they just weren’t the same as the raucous bunch of free spirits with whom I’d tramped all over south-east England. I RSVP’d, informing her I looked forward to seeing the ol’ gang.

It was great to see Rita and the others and to catch up with stuff. As I glugged from a bottle of cold beer, I saw Jeanette, a little greyer around the edges, laughing uproariously at a joke from Matty.

I was about to go over and say hello when I noticed a young man looking over at me. He was about 19 or 20, dressed in a casually smart jacket and white shirt. He was holding a glass of red wine in his hand. His jet black hair hanging around his ears reminded me of a somewhat challenging boy from ten years ago.

He walked over to me, a big grin on his face.

“Hello, Roy” he said, reaching out his hand. “Been a while.”

“Er, Luke,” I said, taking his hand. He had a strong self-assured grip. “H-how are you?”

“I’m well, thanks,” he replied. “Very well.” He glanced around the room. “Funny to see all these faces from my childhood. When I look at all of you it brings back memories of traipsing through mud, having to listen to boring adult conversation. That was my weekend’s entertainment. Thanks, mum” he said, toasting Jeanette across the room with a mock smile.

Jeanette grinned broadly and toasted him back.

“It can’t have been easy for you, Luke,” I offered, surprised at this transformation. “You were the only kid there.”

“It can’t have been a lot of fun for you,” he replied. “I really was an odious little shit.”

“Well, I-“

-“whining and bitching all the time. And you know what, Roy? You’re the only one who didn’t over-indulge me. The rest of ‘em just gave me anything I asked for if I begged them hard enough.”

I had to say it.

“Well, Luke, I did give you that piece of flint you begged for.”

“Yes, Roy. Yes, you did. And you really didn’t want to let it go, did you?”

I shrugged. “I…I was very attached to it.”

“I know.” He stared at me for a moment. “But y’know, everything has consequences, right?”

“What do you mean?”

Luke put down his drink. “Roy, that flint. That tool. It…..it had an effect in some weird indefinable way. I know you think it was just a plaything to me but I kept the flint. It was always there. By my bed, then my writing desk. I never really lost sight of it.”

I was genuinely surprised. I decided to be honest with him.

“Luke, to be honest, I thought you’d have thrown it away years ago.”

“Hardly. I started reading up on neolithic man and Neanderthals. And tool making. As I grew older my interest deepened. I found someone who taught flint-knapping and how these people survived various ice ages.”

This shocked me but it shouldn’t have. I remembered that expression when he first saw the flint, the same hypnotic look on my own face when I kicked it on that woodland path.

“Luke,” I said. “I think it’s great you’ve really gone into this. I just didn’t expect-I mean, you’ve turned this whole thing into a lifelong hobby. I’m impressed.”

He frowned at me.

“A ‘hobby’?” he retorted. “Roy, didn’t you know? I’m studying palaeontology at Edinburgh university. I’m in my second year.”

*

I bade my farewells to everyone at the party. I shook Luke firmly by the hand and wished him great success in his future career. He grasped my hand in both of his and said earnestly “Thank you, Roy.”

He smiled warmly but had a strange glint in his eye.

I put on my jacket and walked out into the street. It felt a little heavy on the left side.

I put my hand in the pocket and felt something as cold and hard as stone and oddly familiar.

Something round but with an unnaturally sharp edge.

Something precious.