by Katie Hutton
‘Like the chapel was for me. Kindness to a sister in distress.’ She saw herself again in the Sunday school, looking at the little clothes prepared for Tom’s arrival.
‘That’s it exackly, Ellen. I rub along with Wattie well enough, and Judy – well, she’s the boys’ sister as well as your best friend. Anyway, that’s why I’d like it, I think, if we was to stick along of them.’
‘Oh Sam!’ She kissed his cheek, and he turned his face, seeking her mouth.
‘Just a minute,’ she said, putting her fingers to his lips. ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you too. That time when you said about the hip-bath – and my drawers in the kitchen sink—’
‘Dordi, I’m sorry, it oughtn’t to have come out that way – I didn’t mean you was dirty, not in the way you’d think—’
‘No, Sam, don’t be sorry. What I mean is, if you wouldn’t mind, would you show me what I should do? I think I could learn.’
‘Teach my teacher? My Ellen, oh my Ellen!’ and he kissed her all over her face.
34 My dear God!
CHAPTER 33
In a talk I had with a gipsy . . . he said to me: ‘You know what the books say, and we don’t. But we know other things that are not in the books, and that’s what we have. It’s ours, our own, and you can’t know it.’
W.H. Hudson, A Shepherd’s Life
Gypsy Lore
Patrixbourne
‘Wish me luck, Ellen! Wait for me in there.’
They stood under an elm tree in Patrixbourne’s little churchyard. Ellen watched him go off to the interview, shaved and brushed and wearing the clothes Mrs Piper had given him. Once he was out of sight, she turned and pushed open the heavy church door. To her relief, the building was empty. She sank into a pew and looked round. It’s plainer than I thought it would be, but that coloured glass is very pretty. She shut her eyes and delivered herself up to the old habit of prayer.
She couldn’t have said how much later it was when she heard the door open again and footsteps – not Sam’s – strike the flagstones. A working man – a labourer’s boots. Welcome to the house of God, whoever you are, sir.
She kept her eyes shut as the steps passed her, then hesitated, then stopped. Her heart knocked in her chest. Whoever he was, he was watching her, she knew it. He was close enough that she could hear him breathing.
‘Miss . . . sorry . . .’ A young man’s voice. She opened her eyes, then opened them wider. How long since she had seen that face? He was taller, his face thinner. He still looked frightened. Ellen smiled.
‘That’s the first time you’ve said anything to me, Vanlo.’
He looked too abashed now to say anything else.
‘Why don’t you sit down? I’m waiting for Sam. Will you wait with me?’
*
At last, the door opened, and the two heads murmuring in the pew turned together to see Sam, rather flushed – and stunned – standing by the font. Vanlo got up.
‘Bruv!’ Sam embraced the boy, exclaiming over his shoulder, ‘He’s too thin, Ellen. Where’ve you bin, my Vanlo?’
‘London, mostly. ’Orrible places. Rooms with rows o’ beds still warm from the last men to sleep in ’em. Labouring. Factries. I tole the lady. Don’t suppose she wants to hear it all over again. Says you’ve seen a man about a kenner35.’
‘I have. We’ve got it!’
‘How big is it?’ asked Ellen, smiling, her eyes indicating the boy.
‘Oh! Big enough, provided we all rub along all right, my girl. Come here till I kiss you, if Vanlo don’t mind.’
‘Oh Sam, you’ve been drinking . . . in the morning!’
‘I’m sober enough for what I’ve got to say. Don’t go all Band of Hope with me, Ellen! They’d have taken it for rudeness if I’d refused their hospitality. The house’ll need a few days’ work. But it took some getting. I’ve never seen a place like that rai’s, Ellen. A creaky gate and an overgrown garden, and then there was this rusty old manservant came to the door and tole me he’d see was the master available. Then he turns round and shuffles away down the hallway. He didn’t say nothing else to me so I just stood there, turning my cap on the doorstep. It was a grand house, all coloured brick on the outside, but the windows needed cleaned, and inside so dirty, all ponging of dust and dogs and tobacco, and full of things I could see no use for – a big brown stuffed bear with a grett grin on his face, holding out a plate and losing sawdust from ’is knees. There was plants in pots gasping for daylight, and a huge black staircase going up into the dark. Then the servant turns round and says, “Well, come in, then. Don’t hang about out there . . . and shut the door behind you. You weren’t born in a field, were you?” Of course, I never said I was . . . but I did have a look for somewhere to scrape my boots afore I came in, though the matting they had down couldn’t have shown more dirt had it tried. “Wait there!” he said, so I stopped between that bear and a man with a wig on in a painting that looked ready to fall out of its frame. I waited ages, expecting the old mush to come out from the back again, but there must’ve been some other way up because instead he comes down the big staircase, picking his way like a cat, there being so much stuff – books and papers and things – on every step.
‘“He’ll see you now,” he says. “And as you don’t appear to be hawking anything, he assumes you to be a gentleman and says to come up the main staircase.”
‘There was gaslight on the landing, and the place needed it, for there was just this one long window full of red and blue glass like in a church, so not much daylight got in. The man knocks quiet-like on this big panelled door and opens it for me, and then he says, “He’s got the parson with him.” Well, I couldn’t turn back then, so I thought I’d just take the talking to and get out of there. And I’m being announced with my Sunday name – “Mr Sampson Loveridge, m’lord” – though I’m sure I never tole him it; Matthew French must’ve done. Then off he goes and I’m left with them in a room that made me feel as near boxed in as the gaol.’
‘Oh Sam!’
‘You’ve not heard the best of it yet. It was all dark panelled like a courthouse, a good size of a place but full of books and broadsheet things more than the staircase, all over the place in little towers I’d to pick my way past. There was some sort of carpet in the middle of the floor but so dusty I couldn’t tell you what colours it was meant to have. And there’s this horrible big fireplace as red as raw beef, but no fire laid, and a sofa losing its innards and these two old codgers sitting there smiling at me, got up in togs Farmer French wouldn’t wear even to clean out the pigs – the kind we’d have turned down when we went monging36. I couldn’t say which of ’em was the parson and which my lord, for they looked to me like twins. But they had this dicky little table in front of them, with a cut-glass jug with a stopper, and three glasses, and they looked clean enough. I didn’t know who to greet so I just nodded and one of ’em says, ”Come in, Loveridge . . . Get down, sir!” and I didn’t know was I supposed to fall to my knees, but then this snuffly old Labrador dropped down from an armchair and that’s where they told me to sit. You can help me brush my trousers in a minute. Then one of ’em looks at the other and says: “I think we have a pure-bred.”
‘It was only about half after ten when I got there, but they gave me this sweetish wine out of that jug and then they drank my health and I’d to concentrate hard on what they said for I never drink so early in the day but they were well used to it. Turns out they aren’t twins but they are cousins, and the parson has his living thanks to my lord. The strangest thing is the parson has a bit of Romani – the words, I mean. I thought that wine must be powerful stuff for it to have gone to my head so fast, but then he starts asking me do I take the Gypsy Law Journal, and I said I’d never heard of it and where was I to take it, for I tried to keep clear of the law, be it Gypsy or gaujo, but that it had a habit of coming after me. They laughed like drains at that and said it was lore they meant, stories and wisdom and that – so then I
knew what tack to take with them. My lord said something about a “true child of nature”, which I didn’t like the sound of but said nothing as I knew French had put a word in for me and I wanted that cottage.’
‘Are there neighbours?’
‘There are neighbours, but not through the wall – not like in Canterbury. Now stop crying, you should be pleased.’
‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ she said. ‘It’s the relief of it all.’
‘Anyway, the parson talks about this Gypsy lore business a bit more and says that the most eminent Orientalists write for it, but I’m sure being born in a field near Oxford doesn’t make me Oriental. He asked then had I read my borrow or barrow or something, and I said I neither took nor borrowed whatever other people said, for I’d rather pay for it fair and square. This made them laugh again but I’m damned if I know why and didn’t care for it much. I told them I could only read a little but enough to know what was written on a cart’s end and to write my own name—’
‘Not true, Sam, you’ve come on so well.’
‘But I did say that I was learning fast and had a good teacher; I didn’t want the parson to offer to learn me, and I could see that’s what he was thinking about. Then he said something in an important voice about the “oral tradition” or some such, and asked about campfires and story-telling and violins but I think I disappointed him because I said we’d always been too hard at work with trying to get food, or making things, or just being too bone-tired for stories and fiddles, but I got out some of Mother’s tales and he seemed happy with them. He’ll want some more, though, and if I don’t remember I’sll have to make something up, I suppose.
‘Then m’lord asked about how I found the prison and bit by bit got out of me all about Lincoln and the conchies on Dartmoor. The wonder was, he was pleased with me for not going to fight as he’d have been a conchie hisself only he was too old to take a stand, he said. He listened too when I tole him about France and how I’d seen more than once a poor nag drown in mud and manure. He filled my glass again then, though I tried to stop him.
‘Then he clears his throat and looks at the parson and then asks me about you. I said you’d suffered on my account and lost near all your friends—’
‘Not all. A letter from Grace came today.’
‘Oh Ellen, that’s hope, ain’t it? And p’raps the old man will come round in time.’
‘He won’t. But I’ll manage. So what about me?’
‘The parson asked – in his professional capacity, he said – was I intending to make an honest woman of you. I said that in my opinion you were honest already but that I wanted to do right by you but I’d still to persuade you. He asked a bit more about that and did I have any marriage lines from before and I said no, and I tole him what I tole Deakin. He looked disappointed when I said that and went on about hand-cutting and blood-mixing and leaping over fires. I said I didn’t know anything about that unless it was something they did in the fairgrounds because it sounded like that kind of show. Then he looked at his cousin and shook his head and said something about the sad loss of the old traditions but I’m sure I don’t know where he got all that from, because I never see’d any of that tomfoolery.
‘He asked me then what age I am and I said I didn’t know exackly but that I reckoned to be about thirty when I think of the places I’ve been and when. He asked did I not have a certificate to say so and I said no, the only certificate I had was that demob one, same as I said to Deakin. He looked a bit happier at that and puts his hands together in a steeple then and looks at his cousin and says something about Somerset House. I said where’s that, was it on the road to Dartmoor, and he laughs and says no, in the smoke right on the banks of the Thames.
‘M’lord then says: “If they have nothing on you in Somerset House, Loveridge, you probably don’t exist!” and they both laugh then. Anyway, the long and short of it is that it says in Somerset House when you was born, Ellen, and when you wed, and when the boys was born, and when Harold died. But me and Noah and my mother and her dead babies and Vanlo here won’t be there anymore than old Fred would be. So – Vanlo, would you mind stepping out a minute?’
‘Like last time, Sam?’
‘Oh . . . not for so long this time, I hope. Don’t go wandering off.’
Vanlo went.
‘So when are you going to marry me?’
‘I’m not sure, Sam.’
‘Oh Ellen, the rashai talked about letter and spirit, same as you did with me, that time. He said children shouldn’t marry as they don’t know what they’re about, but by the time Lukey took me I’d long had to stop bein’ a child. They’re only prompted by their trousers, was what he said. Then the rai went on a bit about some artist he knows what lives like a Gypsy – he says – but like no Gypsy I know. This man has two wives with him and has children all over the country, wherever he takes his vardo. I said, I can only think this is a rich man and no Romani if he can have two wives and paint all the time, for he can’t be getting his own food. Honestly, Ellen, a lot of the time I didn’t know what they was talking about and I don’t know that they wasn’t making fun of me, and I was hard put to it to keep listening to ’em through all that sticky wine, only that I wanted that cottage. But finally they took me to see it, and gev me the keys and the parson said to come to him if you and I wanted to be wed. But I’ve thought about that, and though I want you so’s nobody can say ever again that you aren’t mine, there’s only one man I’d like to stand up in front of with you, him being Cecil Acland, if you’ll come with me and help me look for him if he ain’t still in Winchester – I don’t know how I’d find him otherwise.
‘It’s a strange thing, though, Ellen, that I walked away from my old life, just as you’ve walked away from yours to be with me, but that’s the one the two rais want to know about, not what I want of life now. It makes me feel as I’m my lord’s dancing bear, an’ him calling the tune, that’s all. Pure-bred, indeed!’
35 House
36 Begging
CHAPTER 34
. . . blessed are the dead which die in the Lord . . . Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.
Revelation, 14:13
Stopping Place
Chingestone
‘ “Persecuted but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed.” That was my friend Harold Chown; great is his reward in heaven. Let us go and bury his poor mortal husk, brothers and sisters, and be grateful that we knew him.’
The new minister had listened to Oliver’s tribute with interest and some grudging respect. Now, standing back from the grave as it was filled, he wrung the old man’s hand and said, ‘We had excellent instruction in homiletics in the college, Brother Quainton, but I don’t think I have ever heard an address as sincere and moving as yours.’
Oliver regarded him suspiciously for a moment, unsure he wasn’t being patronised, but the young man held his gaze. ‘Thank you, Brother Chapman,’ he said eventually. ‘Ye’re the poorer for not having known Harold.’
‘But you will help me, won’t you? I shall need your help – many changes are to come the way of the connexion.’ For the minister, ‘connexion’ was now an archaic term, but instinctively he knew it was one Oliver would use.
‘I live alone now, sir, so my time is at your disposal. My little birds is all flown. My grandson to Hartley.’
‘John Quainton?’
‘That’s him. You know him then?’
‘I regret only by repute. The best Moral Science man of his year. You must be very proud of him.’
‘Of John? Oh yes, I’m proud of him all right. I’ll be glad to help you, sir, in your mission. You’ll be coming back to the tea, won’t you? I think you’ve still to meet Mr Newcomb – the Wesleyan man. ’Twas good of him to come . . .’
*
‘So, my Vanlo. How are they all? I seen . . . I don’t rightly know what I should call her now – your sister, I mean – when I was in the gaol, but
we couldn’t say much,’ said Sam.
‘Lukey, I’d call ’er. She’s just the same, or was when I took off. Bossy – you can’t pull Lukey down for long. There was this parson turning up after ’er sometimes. Always asking questions. Writing in a notebook all the time. Had a forehead that big and wide he looked like a baby. He made ’er laugh one time when he said, all timid-like, that he’d like to get hisself a wagon of his own and come along of them – don’t know how he’d do that and still be a parson, mind. They were travelling with some Lees the time I went; Nelson Lee was sweet on Sibela but Caley said she was too little yet.’
‘Why’d you go in the end, my Vanlo?’
‘Missed you, s’pose. Didn’t like that I couldn’t even say so.’
*
Sam and Ellen embraced in the early dawn of a damp Sunday morning, listening to the cockcrow.
‘Tom’s last day of freedom, today,’ said Sam.
‘No! I think he’s looking forward to school. He says he wants to show them all he’s learned already. I’m only sorry he didn’t start when the other children did . . . All that commotion . . .’
‘That’s one way of describing it, I s’pose.’
‘David is going to miss him.’
‘Vanlo said he wants to take him nutting tomorrow.’
‘He’s good with them, isn’t he, Sam? They were tearing round yesterday afternoon with a ball he’d made for them – rags stuffed with sawdust. They liked it so much I thought I’d get a proper one for them, next time I can get to Canterbury.’
‘No, Ellen, don’t do that,’ said Sam gently. ‘Not after Vanlo went to all that trouble.’
‘Oh – yes, of course, I see what you mean.’ She was silent for a moment, mortified. He held her tighter.
‘About us being wed, then . . .’
‘It’s enough for me that you want to, Sam. I’ve told you that I’ll always walk with my arm in yours.’