The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  Pull yourself together, Sam, he told himself. You ain’t dead. Not like poor Harold. Yet that thought plunged him deeper. The man whom he’d begged Ellen to leave had taken himself off, by accident or intention. A good man no one really wanted – not his wife, nor his daughter, even – but who, by dying, had driven Ellen away from him.

  Tom and David are young enough, and loved enough by them two girls, that they’ll grieve, but they’ll get on all right in time. He remembered their faces when they’d set eyes on the wooden train. I’ll make their farm. I’ll stay just long enough at French’s to collect enough elder wood. Something to do – that’ll make me feel better, for a bit, anyway. But I can’t see her. I can’t bear her coldness again. And she wunt see me, not after I’ve spoken to her like that. But was Letty right? Was it losing the baby that made her not herself? Surely he was to blame for that too – the baby he’d wanted to be her ultimatum to Harold.

  Sam thrust his feet from under the covers, and turned the pillow to the cool side. He fidgeted, getting hotter and more restless. Downstairs the noise had dropped to a murmur. Then a hand-bell was rung, followed by a last flurry of movement, another bell, and then the passage below filled with sound. Sam shut his eyes and listened to the wave of voices washing out of the back door, dispersing in the night air in farewells and the uneven tread of boots. Some thumps and bangs followed, the stacking of stools on tables, the cellar trap-door closing. These were sounds he had missed in the clanging and echoing of the gaol.

  Round in circles he went. In his head over and over again he made the toy farm, counting and recounting the cows, the sheep, the sheepdog. He’d make a farmer, and his wife – and two boys painted to look like Tom and David. The farmer’s wife would be Ellen, of course. Who would be the farmer? Some man she’d find after he’d gone. Sam groaned.

  Bell Harry boomed out midnight. In his mind’s eye Sam turned the little figure of the farmer’s wife in his hands, but could not get her to look at him. He must try to sleep. Soon it would be wake-up, the slat in the door pulled aside, the turnkey crashing the keys on the door. He was leaning against the white-washed wall, looking at a man prone on a bed, utterly still, a corpse with a sheet pulled over its head, a label attached to a protruding toe. Water puddled on the floor. Sam cried out, but no sound came, but the turnkey did, knocking at the door, not loud, but insistently. Why did the screw not just open it?

  Now awake, Sam sat up in the bed, wondering where he was. His jacket was hunched against the door, in the shadows looking like a figure leaning with its head against its arms.

  ‘What do you want?’ he screamed. But the figure didn’t move, though the tapping faltered.

  He scrambled to his feet, pulled on his trousers, hooking the braces onto his shoulders, and fumbled at the lock. At last the key turned.

  I must have been shouting. I’ll say sorry and tell Letty I’ll be gone in the morning.

  But this slight female figure with the hat pulled down over her eyes wasn’t her.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Dordi, Ellen, it’s you!’

  He pulled her to him in relief and tenderness, and kissed her forehead, her cheek, her nose, her mouth, her neck, and mi dearie Duwel34 – she responded!

  ‘My Ellen!’

  She nestled against him, her cheek resting on his bare chest. ‘Judy said I was a fool, Sam.’

  ‘It dunt matter what you was, or are. And I shouldn’t have taken on as I did. What matters to me is that you’re here. Take off that coat and sit down. I’m locking you in with me now.’

  He kneeled in front of her and with awkward fingers unfastened her shoes.

  ‘Take off your things, Ellen,’ he whispered. ‘Get in here with me. I’ve dreamed of this for so long – to fall asleep in your arms and find you still there the next morning.’

  *

  Sam woke early, conditioned by the senseless rhythms of the prison. Ellen lay curled on her side. He wondered whether she had moved at all in the night; his body still followed her shape, knees tucked under hers, his arm over her. He had opened his eyes once in pitch darkness, but he hadn’t wakened her then, telling himself that yes, she would still be there if he fell asleep again. So he had put his fingers near her half-opened mouth to feel the heat of her breathing, kissed the fine skin of her shoulders, run his hand in wonderment from the cap of her arm to her hip, and closed his eyes.

  *

  He saw that the fire had sunk to embers, so he got up and poked it into life, adding a log from the little basket Letty had left for him. Without uncovering Ellen, he wriggled under the bedclothes and set about kissing and nuzzling her into wakefulness. The answering tremor came soon, then a cat-stretch of her back and shoulders, and she turned onto her spine.

  ‘Love me, Sam,’ she said, and put her hands up to his face.

  *

  He wouldn’t let go of her even when they stood on the landing and he turned the key in the door, so they went awkwardly down the narrow staircase and out through the passage with his arm round her waist. At the back door she hesitated.

  ‘Here’s my arm, Ellen. I’ll take you home.’

  ‘No. Not yet. Walk with me, but don’t touch me, Sam. It’s too soon.’

  ‘You’re not ashamed of me, are you?’

  ‘No, no!’ And she grasped the front of his jacket with both hands and kissed him rapidly, but then held her palms pressed against him, holding him back.

  ‘I’d be proud to walk with you anywhere, Sam. I’d hold my head high to be seen with such a fine man as you. I’ve dreamed of it, us going together along an avenue, my arm under yours, David on my side and Tom on yours. But not yet.’

  ‘Deakin warned me what we might get. But I want to see my son. Then I’ll take myself to French’s – he’ll be wondering where I’ve got to if he’s seen a newspaper.’

  ‘All right. But we mustn’t . . . flaunt.’

  They walked, then, side by side but a foot apart along the High Street, as the waking city flowed towards and round them: ponderous farm carts and hooting self-important cars with goggled drivers wove their way through milling messenger boys, imperious women in fox-fur stoles, brisk bowler-hatted men, shouting sandwich-men, a shawled woman selling heather, boys in Eton collars with their hands in their pockets, a slew of flat-capped labourers on bicycles. A moustached policeman as smart as a guardsman stood at the junction with St Margaret’s Street, deciding with a flick of his right hand to give precedence to an omnibus. Shops drifted past Ellen as though they moved, not she: gunsmiths, chemists, piano showrooms, bed-linen stores, butchers, wine-merchants. Sam more than once protectively caught her arm to draw her out of danger, then wordlessly they separated.

  Finally they stepped out of the maelstrom, entering the alley that led to the row of terraced houses.

  ‘Thank you, Sam.’ She wondered, absurdly, if they should shake hands. Except he wasn’t looking at her, but down the street, and frowning.

  ‘I’m coming with you. Something ain’t right.’

  And at last he did pull her arm under his, in spite of her murmured protests. His grip tightened as they got closer. Walter was standing before the front window, his mouth full of nails, hammering a board into place. His feet crunched on broken glass. He knocked the last nail home, tested that the board was firmly in place, and spat the remaining nails into his palm.

  ‘Hello, Sam,’ he said. ‘Before you ask, everyone is fine. But it looks like the house’ll have to be given up.’

  ‘Not just that. Looks as if we’ll have to give up Canterbury,’ said Sam.

  ‘Come in and see Judy, then. I’m to wed her, by the way.’

  *

  A subdued Judy kneeled by the fireplace in the gloom of the back room; the curtains were still closed. The two little boys cowered beside her.

  ‘Ma!’ shouted David, and grabbed Ellen’s knees.

  ‘Oh my darlings, I shouldn’t have left you.’

  Tom got to his feet and looked up at Sam. Unlike his brother, h
e hadn’t cried; he was expectant.

  ‘Have you brought our farm?’

  Instead of answering, Sam kneeled and pulled the boy towards him. The child was stiff and unyielding in his arms. He ruffled the dark hair, and kissed him.

  ‘I’m going to see about it direc’ly. I have to get my tools. I’ll make you anything you want. Whatever will make you happy, chavvi.’

  ‘There’s a telegram come,’ broke in Judith. She rose and got it from the mantelpiece and handed it to Ellen. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Ellen, staring at it.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Sam.

  ‘ “Coming Wednesday fetching Harold home. Won’t see Ellen. O.Q.” He’s sent it from Chingestone, so they’ll all know what he’s put. I’ll never see any of them again, Sam.’

  *

  ‘Sam! We was wondering where you’d got to. You look like you want a bit of feeding up.’

  He stood in the porch of the French farmhouse, wary, not quite trusting the welcome.

  ‘Everyone says that, Mrs French. But just to be out in the fresh air makes me feel better – knowing I’m free, I mean.’

  ‘Are you, though? Are you free?’

  Sam turned his cap in his hands, hesitating. ‘In a manner of speaking. But a decent man is dead, Mrs French. There are those who’ll always lay that at my door, and they’d be right, in one way. There are two women in Canterbury, and two innercent children that are afraid to be seen in the street and afraid inside their home. Tom, that’s Ellen’s eldest – my son, I mean,’ and Sam’s face lit up for a moment before lapsing into its earlier anxious expression, ‘won’t be able to go to school for fear of the other children, or more rightly their parents.’

  ‘I can’t say myself that I approve of what you done – looking at it on its own, I mean,’ she began, picking her words, ‘but I hope you’ll stick by the lady.’

  ‘She’s my life. I want to do right by her. I’ve got to show her she can depend on me – that I can keep her, I mean, and the little boys.’

  ‘You’d best come in.’

  *

  ‘You know I’ll give you work, Sam,’ said the farmer. ‘It’s where to put you is the problem. The huts’ll be empty again soon, but you can’t keep a woman and children in ’em through the winter.’

  ‘I don’t want to. She’s not been brought up to that life. Ellen is respectable, you see, a lady.’

  Matthew French shifted in his chair.

  ‘I’m sure she is, Sam. But people mayn’t see her that way, even if the first ones to cast stones med be them as has the biggest secrets.’

  ‘I can’t leave her where she is, even if she don’t come and live along of me. She hides in the house for fear of what’ll happen if she goes out. She daren’t even peg out the washing. Her stepdaughter can stand up to people, and the man she’s marrying is a sturdy enough fellow you’d not want to put your fists up to.’

  ‘Will they come here too?’

  ‘Might do. That house has to be given up anyway. The landlord wants them out before any more windows get broke.’

  ‘There is one possibility,’ said French. ‘I can’t promise but I can put a word in for you. It’s a tied house, belonging to him at the Manor. The family that was in there has shifted up to London. His Lordship is an odd fish. He’ll either take to you or get his gamekeepers to send you on your way, depending on his humour.’

  *

  ‘Loveridge!’ said Deakin. ‘I trust you haven’t come to tell me you’re in some other trouble?’

  ‘No, sir. I only want some advice.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I want to know, can I marry Mrs Chown?’

  ‘Ah! You’ve a wife already, so I don’t see how, frankly. I can tell you why that’s what I think, and you can decide how much you like the advice. Divorce is a rich man’s privilege. What I’m about to tell you would normally cost three or four guineas – do sit down, Loveridge, I have no intention of charging you – and there’d be much more to come. The evidence Mrs Chown would need to give would be in public and wouldn’t be kind to her reputation. My advice would be that you and she quietly make your bed as best you can. Your only hope otherwise would be if we could establish some irregularity about your marriage. How long ago did it take place?’

  ‘Twelve, thirteen year since, maybe.’

  ‘Don’t you know? Your marriage certificate will tell you that.’

  ‘I don’t have one, sir. The only certificate I have is the one they gev me when they let me out of the army.’

  ‘You must surely have had one. What was the nature of the ceremony – before a clergyman or a registrar?’

  ‘It was on Wycombe Common.’

  Deakin stared at Sam. Then eventually he said, ‘Tell me what happened, exactly. I am not familiar with your customs.’

  ‘I saw her. I liked her. She seemed to like me. I asked for her. She said yes. Then we went off together a few days, and when we came back, I put up a bender – that’s a tent, sir – and she came in it with me and we was man and wife, and everyone there knew it was so.’

  ‘And that was all?’

  ‘All? What else should it be?’

  ‘It’s very biblical, I must say. I think they may see it a bit differently in Scotland, where they’re more robust about such matters, but for the law of England, Mr Loveridge, you have never been married at all.’

  ‘Not married? But I promised her, and her me.’

  ‘Legally, that means nothing. Nor to any man of the cloth either, since you did what you did without involving them.’

  ‘Poor Lukey . . .’

  ‘Your wife? A little late to think of her, Loveridge.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be another Gypsy would want Lukey now, not even if I was dead and she a widow, Mr Deakin. She’d have to find herself a fellow as isn’t a travelling man. I haven’t treated her right, no more than Ellen and me did poor Harold. And now you say she was never my wife at all.’

  ‘There is a part of me, Loveridge, that finds this discussion distasteful, if I may be as honest with you as you are with me. My employee – my friend, I should say – is dead because of you, and not so indirectly. Some of our chapel marriages also fall by the wayside, though we enter into them with every intention that they should not. And professionally I see men who come to me asking how they can rid themselves of a blameless wife, usually because they have got a younger woman into trouble or are in a fair way to doing so. But I seldom hear regret for the hurt all this causes – as to your credit I hear from you. The most some feel is some compunction at the idea of their new love having to give evidence in open court about matters which are best left private. You and Mrs Chown will be spared all that. There is nothing to stop you marrying the lady if she wants you, apart from scruples, possibly – perhaps after a decent interval, and perhaps in another town. Yet you express regret where one might have expected relief.’

  ‘I thought I was tied, Mr Deakin. I am glad, more than I can say, for I can do right by Ellen. I’m sorry only that our ways, the ways of my people – a promise honestly made – count for nothing at all.’

  ‘There is something else I think you should know, Loveridge. Mrs Chown’s eldest boy . . .’

  ‘My Tom?’

  ‘Yes. Tom Chown. I don’t know what difference this may make in practical terms, Loveridge, but his birth certificate gives Harold as his father. It was that or no father recorded at all. So legally he is Chown’s son.’

  Sam crumpled in his chair. ‘I dunt understand your laws at all, Mr Deakin.’

  ‘I must confess that I too sometimes have that problem. I’m sorry.’

  *

  ‘I don’t know, Sam.’ Ellen stroked his arm. They sat side by side on the bed in the room in the Flying Horse, the only place they felt safe together.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘It’s only that, what you described . . . it’s very beautiful. A boy and a girl standing beneath the heavens, making a
promise and needing nothing else to make them keep it.’

  ‘But in your world it means nothing, Ellen. It’s as if it never was, just because it never got wrote in a book somewhere. So don’t you see, I cannot do that with you. The promise I made to her never counted for nothing, so the promise I’d be making to you wouldn’t either. It would have to be another way. It’d have to be the gaujo way. But there’s something else too, Ellen, I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Yes, Sam?’

  ‘Wattie and Judy was talking about going away, once they’re wed, I mean. Well, if they was agreeable, and you of course, I thought we med go too, with them, I mean – be with them. Could be England, or New Zealand, or wherever it was – though Wattie’s old mother isn’t mad keen on him emigrating, o’ course. But to be together. You see, apart from the boys, you’ve lost just about everything along of me.’

  ‘And you because of me.’

  ‘It warms me that you see it that way too, Ellen. You know I can turn my hands to most things – carpentering, soldering, smithing – and most beasts. If my teacher is willing, I’d like to get better at my reading and writing. And I can gather food – fruit or hops. I don’t know yet how or what I should grow . . . I have learned to sleep under a roof, even the ones I was made to sleep under. But whatever we do, it isn’t going to be an easy life for you, Ellen. You’d be a poor man’s wife, for the law or without it. We might have many more kiddies – maybe ten, eleven of ’em. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself getting babies of you! P’raps you’d like a little girl next . . . I would. Like that little maid I saw with her father in that church in Winchester . . .’

  ‘You’d still love me in the middle of all that noise?’

  ‘O’ course I would! All I’m saying is that it would be hard. The way I was brung up was always a struggle, but I was never alone, even if sometimes I med have wanted to be. You, me and the boys, well, we’d have each other, first and foremost, but for me, a family is a bit more than that . . .’