by Katie Hutton
‘It is, isn’t it?’
He rose from the table and went out the back to wash. It would take him little more than five minutes to walk to the chapel, but he liked to be early. He might have a chance to speak to Ellen that way.
*
A mile or so away from where the prayer meeting was getting underway, the tall Gypsy sat on the steps of his vardo and demonstrated the making of wooden chrysanthemums to a small shock-headed boy and his elder sister. He rested the blunt side of the knife against his knee and, with determined movements of his right hand, drew the stick of soft wood back and forth, turning it almost imperceptibly as he did so.
‘’Tis magic, Sam!’ exclaimed the girl, watching the spiralling petals of the flower grow beneath her eyes.
‘’Tain’t, though, Sibela. You must work at it, like anything, and have patience. Choose a nice dry one of them sticks Righteous has peeled for us; they’re the ones that curl best and come all nice and frilly, see? Now I’m going to trust you with my knife, but you must hold it this way, or you’ll hurt yourself or your dress, and your ma’ll be angry at me.’
He settled the girl beside him on the step and fastened her fingers carefully round the knife. Frowning with concentration, and wishing her brother Righteous far away, the girl attempted to whittle as she had seen her teacher do it. The first petal appeared, but short to the point of atrophy, the second too long and broad, and too far from the first; Sibela had jerked the stick round in her hand rather than nudged it gently forward. But Sam encouraged her, and eventually the stick was worked round, although the result resembled more a part-peeled leek than anything saleable. Sam took it from her and whittled a little further until the untidy, straggling head separated from the body of the stick.
‘Can I keep this, Sibela?’ he asked her. ‘I’d like to, seeing as it’s your first ’un. See if there’s a bit of that applewood as’ll make for a stalk . . . What colour will we make it?’
‘Pink – and green!’
*
‘You wasted good colour-papers on that?’ exclaimed Lucretia. ‘’Tis good only for burning.’
‘It’s the little maidy’s first try, Lukey. You’d take the heart out of her if you burned that flower. I’m keeping it – and it dunt look bad in that beer bottle.’
‘You’re soft, Sam! How is she goin’ to learn?’
‘She’ll never want to learn nothing if you dunt sell her flowers along of yours – and you won’t, not yet, so that’s why that one and all the other ones she spoils afore she gets good, I’m going to keep.’
1 Romani: wagons.
2 Stopping-place
CHAPTER 6
When Gorgio mushe’s merripen and Romany Chal’s merripen wels kettaney, kek koso merripen see.3
‘Betie Rokrapenes: Little Sayings’, George Borrow,
Romano Lavo-Lil
Cows
Chingestone, Harvest 1922
Ellen hesitated before taking the footpath round the edge of the pasture, but she had had some particularly irritating customers and was keen to get home. The short cut would gain her seven or eight minutes, to be prized as time for a cup of tea and to rest her aching feet. Farmer Horwood’s cows were grouped peaceably at the far side of the field, giving her time to get to the opening into the wood before they lumbered across to investigate her. Sure enough, as soon as she ventured onto the path, they caught sight of her and started to move.
‘Get away, silly girls!’ she called at them. ‘I’ve nothing for you!’ But being cows, they kept on coming. Concentrating on being annoyed as a way of not being fearful, Ellen ignored them and marched straight ahead, counting the trees beyond the bramble hedge to her right until she would reach the stile. They’re not dogs – they can’t tell you’re afraid, she told herself and then, with a cry, she fell headlong, her foot caught in a rabbit hole. Face to the ground, she could now feel the thud of their advance as well as hear it.
Oh no, she thought, my only chance is the hedge, and I’ll get it for muddying my work clothes! She got to her knees – she was hemmed in by the cows, heard their low breathing, their restless pacing as they surrounded her – but she dared not look up. Then she heard a low whistle, some murmured, unintelligible words, and the cows shifted and backed away.
‘Can you get up?’
A stranger, an odd lilt – not quite that of the Chilterns, but not so distant either – deeper, the vowels stretched out lazily. Two pairs of mud-caked labourer’s boots came into her line of vision. She looked up slowly, into the faces of a man and a boy, the man’s face shaded by his hat, the boy’s expression fearful – Ellen could not imagine why. Then the rest of the man rushed towards her as he squatted down and faced her, probably the dirtiest human being she had ever seen. Even the poorest cottage children that came to the Sunday school had been passed under a pump first. Then she realised that it wasn’t dirt; except for a white scar running through his left eyebrow, his skin was simply darker, as dark as the ‘old clo’’ Jews she had seen in London, darker than the Italian boys who’d hawked the pretty Parian ware heads her mother had admired so much but never dared to buy. And horrors! she thought, he was wearing a small gold hoop in one of his ears.
‘You didn’t ought to have called ’em silly girls, you know. Might be true but they dunt care for it all the same.’
‘Who are you?’ she blurted, though she guessed. Even without his swarthiness, the broad face and high-bridged nose alone would have proclaimed what he was.
Her rescuer laughed, revealing strong but uneven white teeth, one of them in the top row broken.
‘Sam Loveridge at your service – Sam for Sampson. Vanlo here is my wife’s brother. Can you stand?’ He got to his feet, and reached both hands down to her. The palms were as pale as her own – and they were clean. She hesitated for a moment, then placed her hands in his and allowed him to pull her up. He held them for a moment longer, then let go, and plucked a blade of dried grass from her hair. He wore an aged collarless shirt, open at the throat, and a crumpled red silk neckerchief. His faded moleskin trousers were held up with string. Everything about him was scruffy – the black hair under the battered but jaunty fedora too long and tangled – and he smelled not only of unwashed clothes and sweat, but of tobacco, horse and woodsmoke, yet somewhere behind all of that was the unmistakeable presence of carbolic. Sam Loveridge was taller than most men she knew; looking up, she held her head back.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me your name, then?’ he said.
‘I am Ellen Quainton. My grandfer’s cottage is the other side of that wood.’
‘And where is your husband’s home?’
‘I have no husband.’
‘That’s hard. A woman should have a husband. If I was your relation I should find you one. I’d be your husband myself if I wasn’t already spoken for.’
Ellen opened her mouth to retort that he had no business to say so, but stopped as she saw the genuine concern on Loveridge’s face – and anyway, the little gallantry had pleased her.
‘I was to have had a husband . . . He was killed in France.’
‘I’m sorry. And I’m sorry to have spoken out of turn.’
He lifted her hand suddenly, and kissed her fingers. She felt his breath warm on her knuckles.
‘Are you all right now?’ he said, releasing her hand.
‘Yes. You have been most kind.’
‘Let us see you home, Miss Quainton.’
‘Oh, no, no, that won’t be necessary, Mr Loveridge,’ her unwillingness making her suddenly formal, their little moment of intimacy shattered.
‘We shan’t let your grandfer see us.’
She looked up quickly, and both smiled. He pulled her arm under his and she heard Vanlo gasp. Ellen was too startled to protest, and anyway, she didn’t want to appear churlish. The boy followed them silently.
‘We’ll be here until harvest end,’ the man said as they walked. ‘P’haps we’ll meet again.’
Reaching the lane,
he released her arm, touching a finger to his hat. ‘I can see you’re troubled you med be seen with me,’ he said, smiling. ‘Same med be true for me! I’ll wish you a good evening.’ Then he and Vanlo turned back into the trees before Ellen had time to thank them. Thinking of the encounter later, she realised the boy hadn’t spoken a single word.
*
Oliver Quainton was standing in the doorway of his cottage, watching Ellen walk slowly along the lane.
What’s Grandfer about? she wondered. She had never known him to be idle and had often heard him raging against others for being so. He disapproved in particular of cottagers lounging in doorways. Whatever he was doing now, it certainly wasn’t lounging. Yet he took comfort from his own doorframe, for unlike most of his neighbours, he could truly say that it was his own. Oliver, in all the years he had worked in London, had secretly and implacably saved, so that when he returned to his native village, staggering under the blow of his son’s death, he carried in a cloth bag inside his shirt twenty hard-won guineas.
‘I seen families turned out at a week’s notice for nothing more than the rumour the father had joined Mr Arch’s union, and if it hadn’t been for the chapel many would have starved,’ he’d told his astonished daughter-in-law, brandishing a key in one hand and title-deeds in the other. ‘I’ll not have you nor the little maidy on the parish.’
Her mother Flora was sitting outside this evening on a stool plucking a fowl. She looked up at her daughter and her face was an unmistakeable warning.
‘You’re later this evening,’ said Oliver. ‘Came by the road, did you?’
‘Yes, Grandfer.’
Her ear stung with the blow and for a moment Ellen staggered. Tears came to her eyes.
‘ “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.” I came that way just now, and I saw no sign of you! You’re a poor liar, girl, and perhaps that will save you. There’s mud on your skirt and your shoes. You’ve come through Surman’s Wood, though I’ve told you not to often enough!’
‘I did, Grandfer, I was tired. And then I thought I would be trampled by the cows—’
Flora whimpered.
‘—so I sat on the stile a while till I got myself together again.’
‘ “He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and vegetation for the labour of man, so that he may bring forth food from the earth . . . ” ’
‘Psalm a hundred and four, Grandfer.’
Oliver smiled at last. ‘Now what about: “The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field . . . ”? I’ll not go on, for I’ll make it too easy for you.’
She smiled back, the tension broken. ‘’Tis too easy anyway, Grandfer. Genesis chapter two – but I can’t remember the verse.’ She could, but allowed him to supply it.
‘I don’t know that Farmer Horwood gives his cattle names,’ she added.
‘But they are still His instrument, child, if they teach you obedience.’
She pressed home her advantage. ‘They frightened me – the way they all came towards me, as if none of them could think for themselves.’
‘I shall preach on that come Sunday,’ he said, ‘for there are plenty of men made in His image that don’t think for themselves either – most of ’em that are drinking their wages away in the Red Lion at this very moment. Come in, child, wash your hands and then go and help your mother. I hadn’t the cows in mind, though. Horwood told me there are Gypsies in Surman’s Wood. He gives work to some of ’em and doesn’t complain; his excuse is that it’s easier for him as he don’t need to find anywhere for them to sleep, seeing as they have their own wagons and tents and all. But you must keep away from them – they’re no company for a young woman and their ways are not our ways, even if they be God’s creatures same as us, wandering the world as a lost tribe of Israel.’ He paused. ‘Some, I will say, have been brought to our Lord and that by the words of preachers of their own. I knew two good men of their tribe in London – the Lord inspired them to bring many home, both Gypsies and Englishmen – but I don’t know anything about them as are in Surman’s Wood.’
Ellen tried to read her grandfather’s expression, but saw nothing other than his usual conviction that he knew what was right. No, her conversation with Sam hadn’t been observed. She went in to wash her hands in the basin of clean water her mother had drawn from the pump, but not before she had gently stroked the fingers the Gypsy had brought to his lips, and sniffed them to see if he had left any trace of himself. He hadn’t. Silly girl, she reproved herself as she took hold of the tar soap, it’s not as if he’s a fox.
*
‘Mebbe best if we dunt mention the rakli4, my Vanlo,’ said Sam as they approached the clearing, where the dark woman in the headscarf – his wife – was building the fire.
‘O’ course!’ said the boy, glad that they shared a secret.
*
‘Where you bin then, Sam Loveridge?’
‘And a very good evening to you too, Lukey,’ he said. ‘You know me, idling about, annoying good honest folk.’
‘I expect that’s about the size of it! Whilst I’ve had wood to gather and other people’s children to mind. It’s what a woman does when her man has no arrows in his quiver.’
‘Rest it, Lukey, please,’ said Sam quietly, without expecting or getting a response. He and their companions heard regular gibes about their childlessness. He had long ago given up suggesting that his wife might be the cause.
‘Have you seed Horwood about work yet?’ called one of the men.
‘No, my Liberty. I’ll go tomorrow.’
‘I seen him today. He’s taking me an’ Caley. I said you’d be along – he’ll take Vanlo too if he thinks ’en big enough,’ said Liberty.
‘He’ll want ’en. Fine strong chavvi5 he is now.’
‘You coulda gone along of my brothers, Sam,’ cut in Lucretia. ‘Too afraid of him asking again what you did in the war, I expect.’
He flared. ‘Dunt know why you complain. There are thousands of women who wish their men hadn’t gone – thousands! And anyway, I did go.’
‘Eventually.’
The other adults gathered round the open fire looked steadily into the flames, avoiding each others’ eyes, but at Sam’s raised voice a shawled old woman took her pipe out of her mouth and nodded in his direction. ‘’Bout time he stopped her,’ she muttered to her nearest neighbour, a younger woman who gave no indication that she’d heard.
‘I don’t suppose you thought to bring back a rabbit, did you?’ asked Lucretia.
‘I’ll get you your rabbit – as many as you want. No point in looking for them early; it’s now they come out.’ He climbed up the steps of the vardo and opened the half-door. ‘Hello, old girl,’ he muttered, addressing the wagon his father had had built for him on his marriage. To give her her due, Lucretia kept it spotlessly clean. His father’s own wagon had been burned with all the rest of his belongings, as was customary at a death; without it his ghost could not be at peace. But this meant that Harmony Boswell, Sam’s mother, had had to join him and Lucretia in their vardo; in the cold months she slept in the narrow cot that had been intended for children beneath the big built-in marriage bed. As soon as there was a breath of spring, however, she would ask Sam to plant and curve the willow branches for her bender tent. The green, gold and red paint of the vardo was still fresh and vivid, and Sam never got bored of the twined carvings of foliage and horses. The brass lamps and handles shone, polished to perfection with rottenstone and oil. This left Lucretia’s palms as rough as pumice and there were times when he shivered at the touch of her strong hands on his bared skin – but she knew what to do with them all right. It wasn’t for want of trying that there was only the two of them. He sighed, seeing the empty beer bottle, and stepped down, carrying his catapult.
‘You coming, Vanlo?’ he called.
‘Why can’t you set a trap like any man with a bit of sense would?’ said Lucretia.
‘You know why. They’re slow – cruel.’
‘Nets.’
‘Dunt have the patience.’
*
Sam and Vanlo walked back along the path that led to the field, an old lurcher trotting companionably alongside them. They leaned against the stile. Sam watched the rabbits innocently feeding; Vanlo watched Sam.
Dignified. A real lady, Sam thought. But when she smiled – that poor sojer had that to think on out there in that mud, that and them blue eyes. I’ve never seed a gauji6 rakli smile at me like that – her whole face so lively. And she fitted so nice and neat under my arm. Come on, Sam, you’re dreaming, and none of it’s right by Lukey.
He rummaged in his pocket and loaded the catapult.
*
The following evening a light drizzle was falling as Ellen paused at the entrance to Horwood’s field. She glanced at the cows absorbed in their grazing, pulled her hat down a bit further and pressed on to where the chalky path met the high road at the crest of the rise. Reaching the junction, she was rewarded by the sight of bandy-legged old Mott walking back from her village to his own lone cottage.
‘Good evening, daughter!’
‘Good evening, Brother Mott!’ She was fond of old Mott, and grateful to him for being there. He would surely have been to see her grandfather, and now she could say she had met him.
From the cover of the trees Sam and Vanlo had watched Ellen, had seen her pause and her moment of decision before moving on.
‘Come on, bruv, let’s get back,’ said Sam.
Vanlo looked up into Sam’s face, and feared what he saw.
*
Sam lay awake. Birds clicked and scuffled across the roof of the wagon. He could hear faintly the tobacco-stained snore of his mother settled in the bender tent close by. Lucretia’s breathing was low and regular, but Sam knew that the moment he reached for her she would wake as quickly as a cat. He put a hand on the promontory of his wife’s hip. In a rustle of bedding she was up and straddling him, and their battle recommenced.
*
Ellen again dutifully took the long way home the next day, skirting the wood, telling herself it was because of the cows, and that she couldn’t count on being rescued a second time. Silly enough he’d think me then!