by Katie Hutton
She was married; she was saved. In a dream she walked back through the assembly on Harold’s arm, dimly aware of the faces turning towards her like corn in the breeze, and the little door opened and she and Harold proceeded out into the crisp November day, to be stared at by the other villagers, as the congregation milled out behind them.
‘They have a little celebration planned for us in the Sunday school,’ murmured Harold, pink with pride.
Ellen looked directly into his tired, kind face for the first time that day, and said steadily but firmly: ‘I cannot love you, Harold, but I want you to know how grateful I am.’
‘I need no more than that. I am patient; I’ve waited for you long enough. Let us go to the breakfast, and then I will take you home.’
*
Ellen put her small suitcase down just inside the cottage door. Though she had been in Harold’s home many times, she looked at it today as though she had never seen it before. His heavy, glossy, Victorian furniture, polished specially by Mrs Britnell the previous day, was the product of factories in Birmingham, whilst local beech worked by local cabinet-makers served in her grandfather’s home. There was a piano she had never seen played, that Judy had told her had been Millie’s, with cellulose keys, an embroidered panel and fussy fretwork. Ellen wondered at the length of the hire purchase for such an item. This would be hers now. She would no longer have to play the jangling old Shaw cottage piano that stood in the corner of the Sunday school. A squat dining table with ugly, machine-turned legs stood on a mock-Persian rug of discordant reds and blues. Ellen missed the rag rug on which she had put her feet every morning in her old home.
‘Um . . . it’s a bit cramped, I know,’ said Harold. ‘I’d like to provide you with a better home, with an open staircase, and tiles on the roof. Not this old thatch.’
‘It’s very comfortable, Harold, I’m sure.’
‘I don’t require much, Ellen. If you can just make sure I have a clean shirt and enough studs for my collar, and my shoes polished. Um . . . I like to go to work on a good breakfast and come back to a nourishing meal – nothing fancy. You see, it all works out rather conveniently, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose it does.’
‘Um . . . there is something I wanted to say to you, that I was thinking about most of last night.’ He cleared his throat and fidgeted with his collar. ‘I’ll say it now, before Judy gets back from clearing up the hall. I thought it would be best if we were not man and wife, if you get my meaning, until after the baby is born. I think that would be more seemly – don’t you?’
‘Oh! Yes . . . yes, of course.’
Oh Sam, Sam!
‘I’m glad we’ve settled that.’
CHAPTER 14
A faithful friend, a father dear, an unfortunate husband lieth here.
Tombstone of John Hughes, Gypsy, aged 26, the last
man to be hanged for horse-stealing (in 1825)17
Reading Magistrates
May 1923
Sam knew he was being watched. He’d only been able to work for the last three months, and though the warmer weather helped, a day spent stooping and rising alongside Vanlo, seeding wurzels in a Berkshire field, left him stiff and sore.
‘You could split, Sam,’ the boy had told him more than once. ‘I’d tell ’em you’d run too fast for me.’
‘And get you into more trouble?’
So when, that evening, he put his foot on the first step of his vardo, it was with an immense longing to simply lie down and close his eyes.
‘Not yet, my Sam,’ said Caley behind him. ‘Me and Liberty are going for a walk. You’re coming with us.’
‘It’s dark, bruv. And I’m all in!’
‘There’s the moon.’
‘Where’re we going then?’
‘Down there a bit . . . along the towpath.’
‘So’s you can pitch me in?’
Caley laughed. ‘Never crossed my mind! Just a bit of business.’
*
‘Wait here.’
‘What for, Caley?’
‘Patience, Sam!’
I could just go now, thought Sam, as Caley and Liberty disappeared into the darkness, only I don’t know as one of ’em wunt go up there and come back down through them trees. Standing on the towpath in the moonlight, the water as smooth and dark as treacle to his right, the trees dense and secretive to his left, he listened intently, until eventually the animals and birds that had fallen silent at the appearance of the three men resumed their nocturnal rustlings and whirrings.
Sam stiffened, listening intently, when, a few minutes later, the scuttlings and squeaks in the undergrowth suddenly ceased. He could hear the unmistakeable thud thud of horse’s hooves coming along the towpath. The white star on the mare’s forehead was the first thing he saw, then that she was led only by Liberty. I was right then, Caley’s in them trees somewhere, watching.
‘That grai’s18 bin chorred19!’ hissed Sam.
‘Quiet, my Sam. The gaujo’ll be along in a minute. He’ll give you some coin and then you come straight home. Caley’ll know if you don’t.’
‘I wunt!’
‘Is that what you want?’ said Liberty, inclining his head towards the canal. ‘’Sides, you still owe Lukey. You ain’t much of a husband to her, are you?’
‘I’ve been a long time mending, bruv.’
‘Take the bridle, Sam. Stand under them trees.’
*
Twenty minutes later the horse whickered and Sam saw two figures materialise from the direction of Hungerford.
‘Have you the goods?’ said a voice.
‘I have,’ Sam answered. He led the horse onto the path. There was a click of metal, and light flashed straight in his eyes. The mare shied and whinnied. He raised an arm, and in a rush of movement he was too dazzled to see, someone hit him in the diaphragm and he sprawled on the path. A whistle shrilled, and more men came running. At least four held Sam down, though he was too winded to fight back. He was handcuffed before he could catch his breath.
‘Ellen!’ he whispered.
*
Sam sat helplessly in the dock alongside a man he’d never seen before, listening as the whole sorry tale of the stolen mare unfolded. His companion, an ostler who handled stolen goods from his lodgings above a livery stables in Hungerford, had, the morning of the theft, been informed by a scullery maid that she was expecting. Sam heard the girl’s hesitant and tearful evidence, as she stood with one hand on the rail and the other on her belly.
‘He gev me jools and rings he couldn’t have come by honestly,’ she said. ‘But when I tole him about the baby he said he’d a child already – in Newbury – and a wife too. I was that upset I ran all the way home and the first person I see’d was the policeman Cook keeps company with, so I tole him everything.’
That ‘everything’ led to the ostler’s lodgings being raided, and the man arrested. In the hope of leniency, he told the police of the deal that he’d made with ‘some Gypsies’ and told them where he’d agreed to meet them to collect the horse they were to steal.
*
‘Sampson Loveridge, you have been found guilty of the theft of a mare belonging to John Jenkins of Avington on the fourteenth May 1923. In recognition of your cooperation with this court and the fact that this is your first peacetime offence, I am prepared to be lenient. I sentence you to twelve months’ imprisonment, and trust that you will take this opportunity to use your time profitably and wisely. We now strive to be reformative rather than punitive in our treatment of malefactors, Loveridge, so I strongly encourage you to learn a trade – or to master reading and writing – so that you may, upon your release, finally become a useful member of society.’
Sam thought of all the horses he had shoed – of ploughing, harvesting, hedging, ditching, stripping hops, of all the pegs and toys and flowers he had whittled and carved – and said, ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir.’
As he turned to let them take him down, he glanced u
p at the public gallery. Lucretia was now nowhere to be seen. Liberty and Caley were on their feet, and already making their way to the staircase; Liberty was whispering in his brother’s ear, and Caley was nodding. Neither man looked in Sam’s direction. A pale Vanlo sat on, raising a timid hand to salute his brother-in-law. Sam smiled back at the boy, until warned to ‘look where you’re going or you’ll break your neck on them steps!’ He surrendered himself to the dark descent, the prison van, the search, the shearing, the scratch of the uniform, the enforced camaraderie of fellow criminals. He hadn’t understood all of the magistrate’s words. Did they still punish those prisoners who, when circling the yard, dared to look up at the sky?
*
‘You’re booked for Winchester, Loveridge,’ said the officer, ‘soon as we’ve the van. I just need a few details first.’ He pulled out a form and took the cap off his pen. ‘Why’d you say you did it? I know you were taken with the mare, but the solicitor said the fence swore blind there was some other fellow – and you wouldn’t even let him mount a defence.’
‘You mightn’t believe it if I did tell you, sir.’
‘You’ll have your reasons. Gypsy code of honour, is it? They don’t care upstairs, of course. As long as they’ve got someone for it, it doesn’t matter much who he is.’
17 St. John the Baptist, Itchen Abbas, Hampshire
18 Horse
19 Stolen
CHAPTER 15
Thou hast taught us that as man is doomed to a life of toilsome labour, the sorrows of women are greatly multiplied, as a penalty for the original transgression. To these sentences, we bow with becoming contrition and resignation.
George Lamb, Forms for the sacraments and occasional services, drawn by the order of the Primitive Methodist Conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1859
Childbed
Chingestone, 27th May 1923
Harold was driven out into the lane by her screaming. It was too much, surely. Hadn’t Millie shown more dignity than this? Or did he simply not remember? The little house seethed with women: the midwife sent for from the market town, Ellen’s apologetic mother who got in everyone’s way, Judith, who refused to miss any of the excitement but who did make herself useful, and Grace Lambourne, Ellen’s unlikely and steadfast champion who had won the chapel wives over to her cause, so that all held their heads high in righteousness against the sarcasm and scorn of their church sisters. But could none of them stop her from shrieking like a cat under torture?
It was dusk, and labour had been underway for some nine or ten hours.
‘It won’t be long now,’ the midwife had said, ‘but we’re being especially careful.’
‘Is the baby in trouble?’
The midwife frowned, not liking what she had glimpsed in Harold’s face.
‘We’ll tell him – or her – off once he’s born, Mr Chown. Your wife is strong, but she’s narrowish in the hips, as you know.’
Harold flushed.
‘It’ll be all right if you go out for a bit, sir. Not much you can do here.’
So, gratefully, he had gone out. He stood irresolute in the middle of the lane. The cries ceased for a moment and the evening resumed its normal concert of birdsong and barking dogs. Then they started up again, it seemed to him more loudly this time.
What if she shouts out his name? he wondered. I’ve read of such things.
Just then an unseen hand banged the casement shut against the cool spring air. Oh merciful heaven! What might the midwife hear? The peaceable Harold in that moment longed for the Gypsy – any Gypsy – to come sauntering along the lane, that he might rush at him and kill him with his own hands, and tear his face to pieces. Now where to? Oliver’s, of course. His daughter-in-law was here, so the old man would be alone. He was the only one Harold thought could give him courage, could bolster him in his conviction of having acted as a righteous man.
He hadn’t gone two hundred yards before a panting Judith caught up with him.
‘My brother is born, Pa,’ she said in triumph. ‘You’ve to come back.’
‘And Ellen?’
‘Both tired, but doing well. The midwife will show her how to feed him, then she wants to be on her way. She says she’ll come by tomorrow to see ’em both.’
Harold winced at the little picture of maternal intimacy that Judith had casually shared. Millie had always modestly fed her daughter out of his sight, and he felt some unreasonable resentment that this unseen, inconvenient child now depended on the breasts that he had never yet seen, much less handled.
‘Oh, and she’s called him Thomas – but he’ll be Tom, she says. I’ll run back now to tell ’em you’re coming, then.’
Thomas? The name was a decent one, of course, but could she not have asked him what he thought?
‘I count for so little, then,’ he muttered. ‘And he’s no brother of Judith’s!’
‘What’s that you say?’
‘Nothing, Judith.’
*
Behind the door he heard the murmur of female voices. Such peace had descended on the house, and thus on the lane, that it seemed unimaginable that he had been driven out by noise and agony not twenty minutes earlier. He knocked softly. Some bustling sounds, and the latch was lifted.
‘Mr Chown,’ said the midwife, avoiding his eye. ‘I shall leave you with your wife, but I advise you not to tire her after such a long labour.’
‘Thank you. My daughter has your fee and will go for the trap.’
Harold thought: She’s said nothing about the baby. He went upstairs and, closing the door behind him, stood uncertainly on the polished boards. Ellen lay marooned on the island of the bed he had inherited and in which he had slept with Millie. The bed in which she had died. The new mother was billowed about by bolsters and cushions. Her hair had been brushed and tied back and it looked damp. Her face was flushed; it appeared to him slightly blurred at the edges. Harold aged ten had discovered his terrier in a barn suckling her puppies. The dog had loved him but she’d snarled at the boy before his words calmed her. Ellen’s eyes had her same look of triumph and wariness now. Her white nightdress was unbuttoned, and in her arms slept her son, his head capped with glossy black hair. Harold thought him extraordinarily small to be the cause of so much suffering.
‘How are you?’ he said.
‘I’ll do. Come and have a look at him, Harold.’
He took two paces forward.
‘Judith says he’s to be called Thomas,’ he said.
‘Yes. But Tom for everyday.’
‘We should arrange his baptism then,’ said Harold.
‘Oh . . . yes.’
‘What’s the matter, Ellen?’
‘I’m just thinking of when we stood up to be married.’
Harold shifted his weight, and coughed.
‘The worst is over, Ellen. We did what was right; we can hold our heads high.’
‘You can.’
The baby stirred, mewed, opened his eyes.
‘Don’t you want to look at him, Harold?’
He stepped up to the side of the bed and made himself lean forward. He thought of Millie, holding Judith up to show to his younger self. Tom gazed up at him, unfocused, perplexed.
‘His eyes are blue!’
‘They won’t stay that way, the midwife says. She held a candle near him and said that blue eyes as dark as his are likely to change – after a few weeks.’
‘His skin . . . Judy’s was very pink.’
‘The midwife thought jaundice at first. Then she looked at the whites of his eyes and said not.’
‘Thomas Chown,’ he said. ‘May I choose his middle name?’
‘Of course, Harold.’
‘Well, as I said, he should be baptised.’
‘I’ll leave it to you, then.’
The baby opened his mouth in a thin wail. Harold averted his eyes as Ellen opened her nightgown and guided the little bobbing head, as the midwife had taught her.
‘I’d best go, then.’ He tur
ned away in relief.
‘Harold?’
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Oh yes . . . all right.’ He couldn’t look at her. ‘Shall I send your mother up?’
‘Yes, please do.’
She heard him descending the stairs with exaggerated care.
‘Tom,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just you and me now.’
*
Three days later Harold walked to chapel with Oliver, who was due to lead the service. A knot of people stood round the porch, and came forward one by one to shake his hand.
‘You’re a good man, Brother Chown. Congratulations,’ said the first. In a daze, Harold accepted their greetings, their immediate turning away. Two or three avoided meeting his eyes, whilst another made a point of holding his gaze. He went in, proceeding to his usual form near the front, though for the first time he would willingly have taken the lowliest position at the back of the chapel. Heads turned towards him as though propelled by a lever; people murmured, hands were held out. He held Oliver’s arm to stop the older man ascending the rostrum, and with his back to the assembly, whispered, ‘It’s like a funeral!’
Oliver patted the hand on his arm. ‘Courage, brother. They all wish you well.’
Harold heard not a word of his friend’s preaching. His message washed over him and out towards the door as a swell of noise that might have been a foreign language. Yet Oliver was evidently on form. The upturned faces of his listeners reflected his words as if they were light. ‘Amen! Glory!’ rang out like sporadic gunfire in that narrow space.
The old man accompanied Harold to the door to greet the people as they left, and to exhort the faithful to attend the prayer meeting that afternoon. As they stood on the path both men turned at the sound of a scuffling behind the hedge, followed by children’s voices, high and clear and pure as if they were choirboys: ‘Cuckoo!’
‘Cuckoo!’
‘Cuckoo!’
‘Wretches!’ shouted Oliver. ‘Come out here till I tan yer hides!’