by Betty Burton
‘Well, she couldn’t, could she? They only comes out now, and next week about, they a be going over.’
They have reached the picket gate at the side of Roman’s Fields house, leaving both girls with questions about the other.
If Bar’s house doesn’t have a fire inside, where do they cook things?
If Louise can’t find bits of common stuff that grows in every hedgerow, what kind of place does she come from?
Lu Wilmott has never encountered a gypsy, other than those who come door-to-door trying to sell their pegs to people who can hardly afford clothes, let alone clothes-pegs. She had no idea of Bar’s unusual ancestry.
The closest Bar Barney has come to street-life is that of Wickham, whose main road is peaceful and whose ancient lanes are narrow and hoggin-spread: muddy in winter and dusty in summer. Unlike Lu, who, since yesterday, has journeyed, Bar has never been outside the village.
As they reach the yard, Duke is geeing up Pixie with his heels; he at once flicks her lightly with a switch and she stands. Duke looks down from his greater height. ‘Where are you going, Bar Barney?’ he demands. Lu backs away from the horse, which looks unsafe without harness and uncontrolled by shafts.
Bar answers, ‘To get the old grandfer a bit to eat. What d’you want to know for?’
‘Askin’, that’s all. Is she her that nearly died?’ indicating Lu with his head.
Bar screws up her eyes and mouth and approaches him fiercely with her fists clenched. ‘I shall tell Ma what you said and then you’ll get it.’
Duke, knowing that he had done what he was so often accused of doing, which was ‘opening his gate too wide’ when he had been told to keep it shut, knees Pixie and rides out of the yard, proud as a Bedouin astride a finely bred steed.
‘Who was that?’ Lu asks.
‘That’s only Duke. You don’t want to take no notice of him. He thinks he’s a man, and he isn’t that much older than me. He just likes to show off like boys do. Come on, or Mrs Wilmott will be back and I shan’t have it ready.’
Lu is fascinated by the wifely way Bar behaves when she is in Aunty May’s. She even washes her hands at the high sink before going to the larder and bringing out the food as Aunty May has instructed: bread, butter, milk, a jug of lemon-juice and a flat pie on a plate. ‘You go and knock on the old granfer’s door and tell him it’s ready.’
Lu looks alarmed. Her encounter with the old man has so far been brief and made embarrassing because of his blindness. ‘I don’t know where it is.’
‘It’s only just along this passage, look.’ She knocks on the door and puts her head round. ‘I got you a bit to eat, Master Gabr’l. Do you want it here?’
‘I’ll come through. Is Louise there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I got some stuff I’ve got to tell her about.’
Lu finds the dinner-time interesting and the old man not so strange as yesterday. Nobody stops long at the table, but they all sit round, even Uncle Ted and two men whose place in the household mystifies Lu, though she guesses they must have been working with Uncle Ted – it wouldn’t have occurred to her that they could have been working for Uncle Ted. Aunty May passes out pieces of pie which are put on the bare wooden table, and everyone tears off as much or as little as they want from a big loaf. Although no one says anything except, ‘That all right for you, Lu?’, she feels that her progress through the pie, bread and milk is of interest and being watched. The old man has placed his packages in a row beside him on the long dresser.
‘You been out then, Gabr’l?’ Ted asks casually.
Looking pleased with himself, Gabriel says, ‘I’ve been down to the village with young Duke.’
‘And you been shopping too then, Dad?’ May asks.
‘I have, and very well I enjoyed it. I should go more often.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear that,’ May says. ‘I was thinking you might be trying to root yourself.’
‘She’s been sucking the lemons again, Ted.’
Ted laughs at his wife’s expense, but it is all good-hearted.
‘What are we supposed to do about these then, Dad, pretend we don’t want to know what’s in them?’
‘Nothing you need, May, mostly it’s stuff to put the roses back in the cheeks of our young Lu here. Open them, May.’ Aunty May does and speaks the names as she opens the chemist’s packages. ‘Scott’s Emulsion, Marmite, that’s a big jar, Dad, I didn’t know they came this big, and some malt, and what’s this? Horlicks. Well, if she has all this lot plus a bit of fresh air and sunshine, she’ll be fit to run back to Pompey.’
The men leave, Aunty May asks can she have John to help with the strawing when the bean-sticks are done, puts covers over the food and returns it to the larder. ‘Am I supposed to give Lu some of this, Dad?’
Lu looks up sharply. She has had enough recently of medicines, and this is what it seems to be.
‘Of course, of course,’ he says, ‘it’s all goodness.’
Lu is too apprehensive to object when Aunty May spoons out the white emulsion. But it’s all right, fishy, and she hadn’t expected that, but it is thick and not bitter like the medicines Dr Steiner had sent round. The stuff in the tin is lovely, a bit like melted toffee; she licks the spoon clean. Aunty May says, ‘Will you look at that?’ as though Lu has done a trick. ‘Every last drop.’
‘Good, good,’ says Gabriel. ‘Now she can have one of these.’
‘Lord, Father, the girl will burst.’
‘Just one, and here’s a packet for little old sweet-tooth, Bar… What size are your feet, Lu?’ he asks.
Lu looks at the old man, puzzled. No one has ever asked her that. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Try these for size, they can go back if they don’t fit.’ Like Lu, Bar’s breath is taken away at the sight of the pink slippers, an item so remote from each of their lives that they haven’t even dreamed of owning such luxury; they know no one who does. Aunty May takes over, kneels on one knee and supervises the fitting. Lu stands up and walks, the backs slock. ‘She could have done with a size smaller, Dad, but she’ll grow into them.’
Gabriel Strawbridge knows how to give gifts and puts yet another bag on the table. ‘Then try with these.’
With the thick, fleecy insoles, the wonderful slippers fit, and Lu walks up and down the kitchen watching her feet flash colour as she does. Bar stands at the sink drying knives, sucking a sweet, smiling, for Bar Barney is one of those rare and agreeable persons who are not covetous but are pleased for anyone to have a bit of good luck come their way.
Lu is very, very conscious of her feet. Her attention is usually drawn to them by a leaky welt, a blister, chaps and chilblains, a hole or the pinching of an ill-fitting shoe; but now, with each step, they sink into the soft fleece, and the tread is lightened by the spongy soles. She looks at the old man shyly, and then at Aunty May, then back again; she knows he cannot see things at all well, and he has one white eye like Grandma Wilmott. His bad eyesight makes him peer, which makes Lu even more shy of speaking to him, but she is overwhelmed by the slippers and his kindness. Except for the things they gave her to bring with her, her mum and brothers only exchange small presents on birthdays and Christmas Day, but she has only known Mr Strawbridge about a day. She wants to tell him all of this but only manages, ‘Thank you, thank you ever so much. I never had no slippers.’
‘No thanks needed, but I should be pleased if you had a go at taking that nourishment I fetched you, and a slice of bread and Marmite before you go to bed. Vitamin B there is in that. Very good for you, Vitamin B.’
‘Oh lumme, I forgot the card. Mum gave me a card with a stamp on for me to write home and tell her if I was all right. Now I can tell her about the slippers.’
‘And are you all right?’ her aunty asks.
‘Yes, I am. Honest. Ray said I would be, but I never believed him. Well, I didn’t know what it would be like, and it’s all right, it’s nothing to be scared of even though there isn’t any houses e
xcept this one.’
Aunty May looks satisfied and as she puts on her wide straw hat with a handkerchief hanging down the back, says, ‘Well, that’s good. There’s a pencil in the jar there, if you sit down now and write it, the afternoon postman will be along the lane in about half an hour; you can wait out on the verge and give it to him.’
‘Haven’t you got any post-boxes?’
‘We have, but the postman comes this way, so he collects our letters.’
When Aunty May has gone back to the fields and Uncle Gabriel to his room to rest, Lu and Bar sit at the long kitchen table and try to convey in the space given for messages Lu’s relief that she does not feel lonely or afraid, her pleasure at having a bed and a room to herself, her pride at the pink slippers, and the many, many interesting things that she has encountered. ‘Are you my friend now?’ she asks Bar.
‘Can I be?’
‘You can if you like.’
‘Oh yes, I haven’t got a friend.’
‘Not at school?’
Bar Barney shakes her head. ‘Nah, they won’t let me because I an’t a Wickhamite.’
‘What are you then?’
‘Romany.’ She meets Lu’s enquiring look as though ready to challenge.
Lu smiles, pleased. ‘I’ve got an Eyetalian friend – her mum makes ice-cream and her dad sells it on the front – but I haven’t got a Romany, I never heard of a Romany.’
Bar leaves her question about what ‘the front’ is, in her flush of pleasure at having got a friend. A better friend than any of the Wickhamites, who often won’t let her play unless it’s in a team and it’s something physical that she’s good at: nobody at school has a friend that has come from Portsmouth in a lorry, and is given a room of her own, a new skirt and top, a toothbrush, and a card to post back home. And pink slippers. Lu has let her try them; they are miles too big but the feel is like warm moss.
They compose the message in tiny writing – ‘Dear Mum, It is nice here. I got a pretty room and a friend. She is Bar. Everybody is nice. Ray will like it.’
‘You are supposed to put your name.’
‘She knows because I said Mum… she give me the card.’
Bar sees the logic of that. ‘Then you got room to say about the slippers.’
‘Lor!’ Lu can’t think why she needed reminding and adds, ‘I got some pink slippers NEW.’
Sitting on the grass verge, waiting for the postman, they compare notes about schools and are amazed that these can be so different; each envies the other some bit of her school-life; they exchange wishes and hopes; they hold back on some things, understanding that there are things that have to be revealed gradually, as the friendship develops. Lu is pleased that she has a brother like Ray to tell about, and they have in common Duke and Kenny who can’t get through a day without teasing and throwing their weight about. With the card safely in the postman’s bag, they return to the house and sit on Lu’s bed reading Dandy and Beano over and over. Eventually Lu falls asleep again, Bar covers her friend’s legs with the counterpane and goes downstairs to scrub some potatoes for Mrs Wilmott to put on when she comes in from the strawberry fields.
The first week slides by in a series of new experiences. In Lu’s debilitated state, she drifts in and out, occasionally not sure which bits are real and which dreamed. This is a strange world, where routine is lax and governed not by factory hooters but by the sun and the weather. When Saturday comes, Lu can scarcely believe that five days have gone, and yet, strangely, it seems as though she has been here much longer than that. The days have gone by in a procession of new experiences, deeply-slept nights and just being here. Also, five days show their passing in the drop in the level of the Scott’s, the Marmite, the Horlicks and the malt.
In five bedtimes Uncle Ted has finished reading the story of Candida starting at Miss Wymer’s school, which has given Lu a lot to think about. At Miss Wymer’s school the girls do not go home at night. Candida had jewels hidden about her. A box arrives containing Candida’s unsuitable, ‘unhealthy’ clothes of green velvet, bright blue alpaca, a red silk blouse with pearl buttons and a pink satin party dress trimmed with white swansdown. It has not mattered that Lu is not familiar with buckram, leg-o’-mutton sleeves or lavish military braid; she can visualize the opening of Candida’s trunk. Candida speaks French, but she is really Russian, and has ‘strange ways’ such as airing her mattress over the bed-rail; she dances with ‘wild, passionate sadness, her feet hardly touching the floor’; her mother is dead, her father is dead, and she has come to the school that her maman loved so much. It was a long, interesting and sometimes baffling story. A school where the girls sleep and each has a room to herself. Were they all rich orphans? Uncle Ted explained every detail and then went back to the beginning so that they could both enjoy it more now that they knew about the complications and misunderstandings and the strange ways of people who had plenty of money with which to look after their children, but instead sent them away for somebody else to look after.
During the day, she rarely saw Uncle Ted; after the first day he took his dinner out with him, but as the week passed she looked forward to bedtime as a treat. Nobody told her when it was bedtime, but when she felt tiredness overtake her, she went upstairs, washed her face, and lay beneath the covers in her vest and knickers, hoping that Uncle Ted would put his head round the door again and say, ‘Are we going to find out a bit more about what all these gels are up to at their fancy school?’ The story lasted for such a long time because once Uncle Ted’s nimbly, husky voice had read a few pages, Lu drifted away into a deep sleep. She was usually vaguely aware of Aunty May pulling the covers over her and lighting a night-light, and then it being daylight again. In five bedtime readings with Uncle Ted, Lu has learned that ‘petite’ is French for small, ‘dame anglaise’ is ‘English lady’ and (for Uncle Ted can only guess until he can get his hands on a proper dictionary) ‘jeune fille’ might mean ‘young girl’.
Candida appears to have no faults, she is transformed, becomes beautiful, thoughtful, happy with very little, friendly, understanding and very helpful. Lu knows that she could never be like Candida; if she had a box containing clothes of glorious red silk or green velvet, she would never give them up to be like everybody else and wear a black serge skirt and a woollen blouse. On the second reading, Uncle Ted and Lu agree that they probably wouldn’t like her if they met her in real life. Lu secretly covets a name like Candida, but much prefers to have a giggling friend like Bar who would never turn out to be a princess.
Each morning, whilst they carry Aunty May’s cold tea to the fields, Lu retells each episode to Bar. They try to think of things to say to her about petites jeunes filles and dames anglaises. Aunty May says she is very impressed and teaches them a song in French, about people being called to arms and becoming glorious soldiers. The girls are thrilled at hearing the strange language spilling from their mouths.
* * *
Vera Wilmott was still in hospital. It had been agreed that Ralph would catch the midday train on Saturday and see May. Vera said, ‘Lu sounds as though she’s all right on her card she sent. I don’t expect May will mind if she stops on till I’m out of here. Don’t tell Lu I’m in here, not yet. If you bring me in one or two cards, I can write them and she’ll never know what happened. I’ve thought over and over again since I’ve been laying here what a blessing it was Hector took her when he did. I should have hated her to find me…’
Ralph, as embarrassed about crises as herself, squeezed her shoulder briefly. ‘You want to forget that; don’t think no more about it; you just get yourself better. Ken said he’d come later on, when you’re up and about.’ Kenny had sent in a bunch of violets and a bag of sweets – without needing any reminding.
Vera was past caring how they were going to pay the bill; for the first time in her adult life she was in bed, warm, fed, with a nice hot drink at night and people concerned for her health. Painful as moving was, she could still do with six months of this life. Auntie Elsi
e was going to be allowed to come visiting in Ralph’s stead. It would be a relief to tell a woman what she had been through. Elsie would say that it will be a long job, hysterectomies are the most major surgery, weeks hardly putting a foot to the ground, and six months before getting back to work. Nothing of which she has been able to discuss with Ray; in any case he has enough to cope with in seeing to everything at home. He said he didn’t mind taking her things back for Dotty to wash, but Vera minded, it wasn’t a man’s job to do that, not a son’s job. He had always been a nice boy, the best son a woman could wish for. If it hadn’t been for Ray, Vera doesn’t know how she would have managed these last few years. He had carried the whole house on his shoulders, her own bit of earnings and Ken’s together hardly paid the rent and gas, but they had never gone without a meal of some sort.
She would like to see him with a nice girl to look after him; he didn’t meet the sort of girl Vera wanted for him. She had always encouraged him to attend meetings that took him out of town, expenses were paid so it was a chance for him to get away, you never knew who you would meet going further afield. Ralph said ‘fat chance’, delegates hardly got out of the conference hall. She didn’t believe that, he always seemed to be a lot happier, more full of life after he had been away for the NUR, especially if he had a chance to speak. She just couldn’t picture her Ray getting up in front of hundreds of delegates. She hardly understood what a delegate was anyway, only that people had respect for a good union representative, and a young one at that – it showed brains. It was having brains that helped you pick yourself up by your bootstraps and get on. More than anything she wanted her children to get on – not just the boys, Lu had a good head on her shoulders. Once or twice when Vera had been daydreaming over her endless hand-sewn lacing, she had visualized Lu going to a place like Northern Grammar, wearing a Panama hat and gym-slip. When she was up and about again, she would find out about scholarships. There was plenty of time.