by Katie Hutton
‘Or loving. I wonder sometimes how different the two are, Ellen.’
‘And there are the bats, of course,’ she said, rushing on. ‘I’ve to fasten the casement against them.’
‘Do you sleep alone, Ellen?’
‘Oh! Well, yes! Since my sister died – she was six.’
‘Poor little maidy. Just you two, was there?’
‘No, there’s my brother John, but he stayed up in London for work. He was a carter, like Grandfer – like Father was – but now he works in Covent Garden. He says it’s the closest he can be to the country, to be up in the dark to handle vegetables with the earth still on them. John misses us, and I miss him. But it’s God’s will, he says, and he finds righteous people in the city as much as in the fields.’
‘He your elder brother?’
‘Younger by three years or so, though you wouldn’t think it to see him, big strapping fellow that he is.’
‘Missed the war, then?’
‘Thankfully. He was all for joining up to start with but he was too young. Then when so many didn’t come home, or came home like poor Reggie, he got fearful. When he couldn’t avoid conscription any longer they took him off to Aldershot. But it was all over before they’d finished training him.’
‘Do you go and see him in London?’
‘No. Grandfer wouldn’t like it, so we wait for when he can come home. We all lived in London for a while; Grandfer and Father worked hansom cabs – closest they could get to carting. But then Father died and Grandfer could see that the hansoms and horses were going to be put out by those motors – he said anyway it was better to toil in the vineyard of the Lord at home than in the richest of mines.’
‘We’d find something to agree on, at any rate.’
‘I think, though, that some in the chapel were relieved when we left. Grandfer is a bit stuck in his ways, and he hates to be crossed. Of course, Mother and I had nowhere to go but back here with him, though I know she was happy to come home.’
‘Where was it you lived?’
‘Clerkenwell.’
‘I never went up there – they tole us Italians live there so maybe they take the work we would do. We go to London, if there isn’t enough work in Kent after the hopping, and pass the winter there – on Wandsworth Common if we dunt get moved on. But I dunt care for it. All them people stuffed into lodgings where you mun breathe everyone else’s air and hear their clatter at all hours – and share a privy instead of looking for a nice, clean ditch. We don’t like houses – people die in ’em. And in a London house you can’t go out of a morning and walk barefoot on grass.’
‘And what do you do there?’
‘Anything. Collecting old iron, rags, some tinkering. The women like London better than I do – it’s good for the dukkerin.’
‘Dukkerin?’
‘You know, the palms, the fortin-telling.’
‘Work of the devil!’
‘Not really,’ he said mildly. ‘Sometimes people need their dreams, and sometimes they just need to be told something about themselves they know already but haven’t the confidence to think on.’
‘ “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practises divination or tells fortunes . . . ” I can’t remember rightly how the next bit goes, but it’s something about abominations. Grandfer would know.’
‘Oh, Ellen, I wonder what life it is you have! You’re wonderful quick with them scriptures. I can tell you I’ve never set fire to anyone yet. And it’s the women who do the palms, mostly. Lukey can be an abomination when she wants but there is no harm in my old mother, I’m sure! All the fortin-telling does is gives a person something to hope for.’
‘For money!’
‘When you work in that shop you take money for the time you pass there, don’t you?’
‘But the ladies go out with parcels. They get something for the coins they hand over.’
‘And so they do with the dukkerin, even if most of the time it’s just a way to amuse themselves at a fairground, something for the raklis to laugh over afterwards, to see if they can spot the tall strangers they’ve been promised. I can’t believe your ladies buy things they really need half the time, or they wouldn’t have ’em to give to us when we come calling.’
‘I’ve never been to a fairground.’
‘Never wanted to know your fortin?’ He took hold of her hand. ‘They say it’s all hiding in them creases. Never wanted to know if there was some man who loved you enough to die for you, and you never knew he was there?’
‘That’s not funny, Sam. Give me back my hand.’
‘Why, because you don’t want me to tell your fortin or because you don’t want me to hold it?’
‘Because I don’t want to know – ’tis wrong! “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” ’
‘I wunt want to know either, if I’m truthful.’
‘Let go of my hand, Sam!’
‘Sorry,’ he said, relinquishing it. ‘I can’t tell your fortin anyroad. There’s too much in the way now . . . I mean, I know you too well.’
‘It would be horrible to see the future. What if Charlie and me had known when it was his last leave? If I’d screamed it to the hills no one would have believed it.’
‘My poor girl. I wish I could make you happier. Do they let you laugh much at home, Ellen?’
‘ “There’s a time to cry and a time to laugh”, and if I don’t get home soon it will be a time to cry and no mistake!’
‘I’ll hold you back no further, then,’ he said, looking rapidly up and down the dirt road. ‘Come a bit further into the wood. I’ve something to ask you.’
‘What is it, Sam?’ she said, following him. Now they could not see the path nor be seen from it. She looked up at him expectantly. He took her face between his hands.
‘I’d like very much to kiss you, Ellen.’
‘You may not!’ She tried to lift his hands away, but he was immovable.
‘I’d thought to ask you to close your eyes, so that I might give you a surprise. But that won’t do. I want you to want me to kiss you, you see.’
‘You have a wife, Sam,’ she said coldly. ‘Let go of my face.’
‘I do, don’t I? I was married to her when I was no more than seventeen years old. I can’t even be sure if that’s right, for I don’t know when my birthday is.’
He let go of her face and grasped her hands.
‘A boy of that age don’t know what he wants but he knows he must find relief for his urgings and if he’s promised that, then he’ll accept any price, not being old enough to know better. But you – you’re the best thing I ever did see. And if you tell me to take myself off now, and never set eyes on you again, I’d do it and never forget your face my whole life long. But let me kiss you now, dear Ellen, for pity if nothing else, and then go and marry that old man if you must.’
‘He hasn’t asked me and I wouldn’t if he did!’
‘Then you hurt no one, Ellen.’
‘I hurt your wife!’
Sam sighed. He released her hands. Ellen thought of Harold’s pursy mouth. She saw the man before her transformed as Harold would have wanted him: short hair, naked ear-lobes, half-strangled by a collar and tie, stooping in the chapel porch and taking off a respectable homburg hat identifical to those of the other Prim men. She thought of Charlie’s mouth full of Picardy earth, and of her own loneliness. She lifted her face.
‘Ellen!’ he whispered. His face, shadowed by his hat, came towards her and she saw his eyes close as though he was giving himself up to sleep, lashes thick and dark against his tawny skin. Her own lids closed as his warm, dry lips met hers, at first tentative, shy. Then his arms closed round her, pulling her to him; she felt her breasts crush against his chest. Then gently, gently, the tip of his tongue probed the corner of her mouth and moved delicately across her lower lip until she opened to him. She felt as much as
heard the moan in his throat and tears came unexpectedly to her eyes.
I don’t deserve this happiness. It’s wrong, all wrong, but I love him – I love him! Her hands went round his neck, exploring the skin beneath his neckerchief, dislodging his hat; it fell to the ground with a tiny thud, no more noise than an acorn would make. I could live on the smell of him! Her fingers meshed in the darkness of his hair. Oh Sam, if I could just hold you like this forever. I daren’t think of anything else.
*
‘Cat got your tongue?’ asked her grandfather, frowning at Ellen across the tea things.
‘I’m sorry. I just had a busy day, that’s all.’
‘You ain’t eating much, either,’ put in her mother.
Ellen reached obediently for another slice of bread and butter. ‘I think I might go up early, if I may.’
‘We’ll say prayers then as soon as you’ve done with the washing-up,’ said Oliver.
‘Mother, could I take the bicycle tomorrow?’
‘Of course, dear. Give yourself a bit of a lie-in,’ said Flora, averting her face from Oliver’s disapproving expression.
*
Ellen lifted her face to the breeze as she sped hatless along the road, letting the air fill her lungs, her hair lifting. Glancing left through fencing into Horwood’s fields, she saw a knot of men working the reaper-binder, but looked away as the man atop the machine turned in her direction. The bicycle wobbled, but then mercifully the road went into a dip, and the fence gave way to hedgerow.
*
Mrs Ansell met Mrs Larden coming out of Colton’s Drapers, clutching a small parcel of haberdashery.
‘Oh Nellie, lovely to see you, dear! Fancy Rumsey’s for a cup o’ tea? If I don’t sit down for a minute these shoes will be the death of me.’
‘Oh, that would be just the thing. Who was it served you in there, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘The Quainton girl. Why?’
Her friend took her arm confidentially and bent her head closer.
‘She’s been seen on the footpath by Surman’s Wood, talking to one of ’em Gypsies.’
‘No! And her quite the Miss Prim!’
‘Then she went with him into the wood, I was told.’
‘The little fool!’
‘Perhaps someone ought to warn the girl. Her mother is too afraid of her own shadow and of that old curmudgeon Oliver to do anything. That’s if she even knows.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t tell her – spoil all the fun, that would! And besides, it’s not as if it’s any of our business, is it?’
*
‘Ellen, you are distracted. I’ve asked you twice now to get me down the blue worsted but you’re in another world.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Colton. I’m a bit tired. I’ll fetch the steps.’
‘Tired?’
‘Cats.’
*
After prayers that evening, Ellen went up to her room and hunted in her New Testament for those ominous words in the Epistle to St James: ‘ . . . every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’
‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ she wept. ‘I can’t see you again. I’ll pray for you, and hope someone will pray for me!’
For the next two days she rode her mother’s bicycle with eyes resolutely forward.
*
‘Can you walk the path again tomorrow, Ellen?’ asked her mother as they prepared the tea. ‘I s’ll need the bicycle to get to Mrs Lindow’s about the Mission returns.’
That night Ellen in her prayers gave thanks for Mrs Lindow and her book-keeping for putting her to the test.
Perhaps he won’t be there, and if he is, I’ll just be polite and tell him not to speak to me again.
She woke up during the night. He’ll be there, of course he will! He won’t see me on the bicycle, so he’ll know I’ll be walking.
*
He was there.
‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘You’re stiff with me now, Ellen.’
‘I should think so. You had no business to take that liberty.’
‘Well, I’ll say I’m sorry as you’ll expect it of me, but I’m not. And the way you kissed me back, nor was you. I’m only sorry you ran off so fast afterwards. Thought better of it, did you, once you’d given me a try?’
‘I’d best go.’
‘Stop – at least let me explain myself. I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since I saw you that first time. I thought you the prettiest thing I had ever seen, a real lady. Not a high and mighty lady, a gentle lady like in the old tales, good and kind – too much so for the likes o’ me. I’ll have to move off with them when autumn comes and I mightn’t ever see you more, and I wanted that to remember you by – and I will, for always.’
‘Oh Sam, you mustn’t think of me that way!’
‘Mustn’t? Can’t help it, more like! I’ve fallen for you as deeply as I can, Ellen. I know I’m not allowed to, but it don’t alter the case any. And I can’t regret it, even if it makes for misery my whole life long. I’ll have your words in my head forever. I can’t read none, as you know, but that means I dunt forget nothing. I’ve to think on a thing instead over and over – that’s my way of writing things down. Let me just ask you one thing, and if you want, I’ll disappear into that wood and you won’t see me for dust ever again.’
‘Ask me, Sam,’ she whispered, her throat tight.
‘Do you think anything of me at all – or did you just like my company enough to talk to me?’
‘Oh yes . . .’ said Ellen.
‘I mean more than you just being polite to me?’
‘Sam,’ she said, trying to steady her voice. ‘I think you talk too much sometimes.’
‘What?’
She took a step closer to him and held out her hands. He took them. She looked up at him, and all the feverish resolutions of the last three days evaporated. Astonished at her own boldness, she tilted her face towards his. Their kiss was long and deep, and she exulted as he drew her close, feeling his heartbeat, his urgency.
‘Are you my girl?’ he murmured into her hair.
She stroked his cheek.
‘Ellen!’ He looked up and down the path – empty. ‘Come into the wood with me a little way,’ he said. ‘I want to walk with you and hold your hand, like we’re reg’lar sweethearts, I mean.’
‘I can’t be late home, Sam.’
‘Five minutes. I’ll take you another way that’ll bring you back to the road so no one will be any the wiser.’
‘All right.’ Now that they had kissed, she didn’t know what to say to him.
‘I like your quietness,’ he said, as though he had read her thoughts. ‘You make a man feel rested, like he doesn’t need to prove himself. He can just be who he is, with you.’
*
Vanlo crouched, barely daring to breathe, though he was getting cramp. Through the tangle of branches he looked down on them standing in the glade. They had stopped murmuring and Sam was kissing her again, the gauji girl’s arms up round his neck and his across her back. Then Vanlo saw his hands move downward and rest on the curve of her bottom, pulling her closer to him. The girl wriggled a little at this, but their faces didn’t separate and Sam didn’t let go, and Vanlo finally saw her respond by pressing closer to him. Sam’s hat came off and rolled on the ground. Vanlo had never held anyone as Sam did now; in the Romani life a kiss was never casual. Looking at them he knew with thrilling intuition that these two longed to be naked.
At last Ellen broke away, though Sam held her hand and tried to retain her. She made one more little rush at him, swiftly kissing his mouth, then hurried away back towards the path, the shortcut forgotten. Sam stood some time looking after her, then picked up his hat and brushed it down before slowly walking away. Vanlo got up, stretched, wincing at the snapping of a twig, and stiffly went to catch up with Sam.
‘Vanlo, boy!’
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‘I thought I’d lost you!’
‘That’s what I’d meant, truth be known.’ Sam looked at the boy intently.
‘I’ll not say, Sam!’
‘I know that.’ He passed an affectionate hand over Vanlo’s hair. ‘It ain’t fair on you, though.’
*
Ellen’s happiest memory of her dead father was of a day when the spring air was sweet with expectation, and he took her on the cart with him along a road edged with primroses, to make a delivery to a farm near Monks Risborough. It was two years before the family uprooted and went to London. Ellen was five years old, exultantly sitting higher than the cow parsley nodding in the hedgerows, looking over the fields from her vantage point to where newborn lambs staggered bleating behind their mothers.
‘I’ll show you something partikler after we’ve got shot of that old plough,’ said Luke Quainton.
The little girl stared perplexedly at the white scar cut into the slope of the hill, the turf peeled away to reveal chalk in the shape of a solid triangle, with atop it a cross.
‘There’s only one. Where’s the thiefs, Pa?’ she asked eventually.
Luke raised his eyebrows. ‘We ain’t Catholics, child. We don’t need any cross to remind us. But you’re a clever girl to ask me that question.’
‘They didn’t ought to have done it, though,’ she went on.
‘Done what?’
‘Scratched the hill. What if it wakes up and is angry?’
Luke laughed. ‘ “Ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove.” Oh daughter, ’tis the Almighty as’ll shift mountains, not mortals with spades! Anyway, there’s prettier cuts than this. Horses and that.’ He twitched the reins and the mare moved for home.
But the child Ellen could not shake the idea that the impassive hills looking down on her world could, if provoked, rouse themselves and send all tumbling. Lying in bed later in the twilight, she raised knees and elbows beneath the blanket, making of herself a mountain range. The slightest movement, and the whole terrain shifted.
*
Now the adult Ellen lay in the same bed, no longer believing that mountains could be awakened, not even by the Almighty. Had He not stood by and seen pastures, cornfields, forests and the poor mortals they contained blasted out of existence, and done nothing? She tossed off the blanket, shifting restlessly, unlacing the neck of her nightgown for air. She looked down at the landscape of her body shrouded in white poplin, and trembling at her boldness, raised her knees into two peaks. Then she lifted her arms up to embrace the empty air. ‘Sam, Sam!’