A Winter Love Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  Now he looked down into Bonnie’s lovely face. He had always imagined there wasn’t another female to compare with Nelly, but Madge’s granddaughter had grown into a beauty with her long black hair and blue eyes and it had been a sweet torment over the last year or two living in such close proximity.

  His voice thick, he whispered, ‘Did you like watching us, Bonnie? Did it make you feel aroused, all hot and bothered inside? Did you wish it was you?’

  Her guttural exclamation of distaste along with the look on her face left him in no doubt what she thought of that, and as she struggled harder, his fingers bruising the delicate skin of her wrist as he tightened his hold, she muttered, ‘You’re disgusting, repulsive, let go of me.’

  ‘Oh, you want it all right, you’re ripe for it, and you’re going to give it to this lad, whoever he is. How many times have you met him like this? Has he had you already?’

  As her free hand swung to slap his face, he caught it, pulling her hard against his chest so that her neck jolted painfully. Like most of the unmarried fair girls, Bonnie had only a rudimentary knowledge about the facts of life. Since living with her grandmother and Franco, she knew things went on in their marital bed now and again. Things that involved grunts and groans and caused the wagon to creak in protest, but as her grandmother had never talked to her about the birds and bees, other snippets of information had been gleaned from her friends and these were sketchy at best. Apart from dire warnings that lads were only after one thing and woe betide a girl foolish enough to get too friendly with a member of the opposite sex, the travelling community considered it proper to keep their daughters in the dark about sexual relations until the wedding day, and even then some of the mothers evaded what they considered a highly embarrassing topic. This made for all kinds of wild imaginings among the girls, small threads of truth wound in with a great deal of conjecture.

  Now Franco’s mouth covered hers; one arm was wrapped round her slender waist like a vice and his other hand moved to grasp the hair at the back of her neck and keep her head still. Blind panic seized her. His tongue was choking her but her fists beating at his shoulders had no effect, and even when she kicked against his legs he didn’t seem to feel it. Franco had always been proud of his muscled physique and worked hard each day to keep himself in shape, his body strong and powerful. Burgeoning on womanhood at fifteen, Bonnie was still slim and sylphlike, although since starting her monthlies the year before she had grown taller by some six inches, but this was no weapon against Franco’s brute strength.

  At one point she managed to wrench her mouth from his long enough to scream, but immediately he thrust her backwards so she lost her balance and fell over, the breath leaving her body and her head making thudding contact with the ground. And then he was straddling her, one hand across her mouth and the other yanking her clothes up over her thighs. She fought him as he ripped her knickers off, but it was the wild flailing of a desperate, frightened animal caught in a trap and knowing it was helpless. And then pain such as she had never experienced before rent her in two, burning, excruciating agony that was unbearable as she screamed silently against the cruel fingers clamped over her mouth and nose. She couldn’t breathe as his body pounded her into the dust and she couldn’t fight any more; hell had opened and swallowed her up, and the pain and terror and roaring darkness as she began to lose consciousness were taking her down into the depths.

  It could only have been a matter of seconds before she came to. Franco was heaving himself off her, but even though his weight had lifted she couldn’t move, lying limp and drained of life. He was breathing heavily as he did up his trousers, kneeling beside her, and then he stood up, flicking back his long black hair and offering her his hand to get up. Still she made no movement, tears rolling silently down her face although she was unaware of them. She was in a great deal of physical pain but her mind seemed to have closed down, her senses registering the call of an owl somewhere in the distance and the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees either side of the lane, but that was all.

  He stood looking at her for a moment or two and it was this that made her pull down her clothes and roll onto her stomach, the dust and little stones rough on her face.

  ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t want it. You’re all the same, you lassies. Giving a man the come-on and then acting up after. It’s part of the game you play, isn’t it? But I’ll treat you right, Bonnie. I want you to know that. Better than any young lad still wet behind the ears. Madge an’ me haven’t been seeing eye to eye for years, but you know that, same as everyone else. No one would blame me if I left her. We could run away together, join another fair, how about that? Somewhere down south if you like? You could have bairns, we could become a proper family. Madge has cheated me out of becoming a da but it’s not too late – I’m in my prime and I’m ready to settle down. I’d never look at another lass, not if we got together.’

  He waited, and when no answer was forthcoming from the crumpled figure on the ground he said impatiently, ‘Come on, Bonnie, get up. Look, I could have been more gentle but it was you firing me up that made me act a bit rough. It’ll be better next time, I promise you. And I meant what I said about us getting away. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Somewhere where your grandma would never find us.’

  When he bent down and touched her it was the catalyst that brought life back into her limbs. She scrambled away on all fours before standing up some yards away from him, her fists clenched and her eyes wild. ‘Don’t you come near me. I hate you. I hate you.’

  ‘Calm down. What’s the matter?’

  Even in Bonnie’s dazed state she realized Franco seemed to have no real idea of what he had done, incredible though that was. He thought so much of himself that he couldn’t imagine she’d meant what she said about finding him repulsive. As he took a step towards her, her voice rose. ‘I’ll scream and keep on screaming and I’ll tell them what you’ve done.’

  He hesitated. There had been a note in her voice that had finally got through to him. His face darkened and his tone was threatening when he said, ‘Oh, aye, is that so? And how are you going to explain being out here then? I’ll tell them you were meeting a lad and I’d got wind of it and followed to find you and him at it. No one will believe you, Bonnie. I’ll say this lad scarpered when he saw me –’

  ‘You come any nearer and I’ll scream anyway.’

  Franco raked back his hair again as he made a sound deep in his throat, but he must have decided she meant what she said because he didn’t attempt to move closer. ‘You’ll come round.’ The tone of his voice could almost have been called soothing. ‘I’m offering to leave everyone and take you away to begin a new life – that’s how much I care about you.’

  ‘Care about me?’ Her voice was so shrill a blackbird in one of the trees rose squawking from its roosting place. ‘You forced me—’

  ‘Forced you? We had a bit of a tussle, that’s all, but you wanted me to do it. I know the signs, I’ve had enough lassies in my time. Look, it’s no good talking now, not with you in this mood. Come morning you’ll be in a different frame of mind and we’ll make plans. It’ll all come right, you’ll see.’

  He was mad. The whole world was mad.

  After another moment he said, ‘You coming back with me?’ and when she continued to stand as if turned to stone, he added, ‘No, perhaps best if we play it safe. You come when you’re ready then.’

  She watched him walk away but it wasn’t until she was sure he was gone that she sank to the ground, her legs giving way. The storm of grief and shock and tears brought no relief, the numbness that had blanketed her mind was gone and now pain and horror were uppermost. It was a long, long time before she was able to pull herself to her feet again and she stood for some minutes, her eyes closed, trying to steady her shaking. Her torn knickers lay where Franco had flung them and she used them to wipe the blood and sticky mess from her legs, feeling as though she would never be clean again. She had to wash herself. She had to get rid of th
e smell and feel of him or else she would become inhinged, because she couldn’t stand it.

  Without thinking further she began to stumble along the lane towards the sound of the sea, whimpering as she went. Afterwards it frightened her that she had no recollection of the next little while. It wasn’t until she was waist deep in the icy waves that her mind became her own again.

  There was no one about, the sea black and stretching endlessly in front of her, and she stood for an eternity, the spray covering her from head to foot before she bent down and took handfuls of sand to wash herself. She scrubbed herself raw but she couldn’t feel it, not until she waded out of the freezing cold water and even then she welcomed it. Any last remnants of what had happened, of him, had been washed away from her body by the icy salty sea.

  Shivering uncontrollably she began to walk back towards the campsite, but it wasn’t until she had left the lane and entered the field where the living wagons were standing that she realized she knew exactly what she was going to do. Sometime during the hour or so she had been in the sea her brain had been working independently of herself, formulating a plan, and now all she had to do was obey the instructions in her head.

  Chilled to the bone, the first thing she did, after establishing that Franco and her grandmother were asleep in their bed under the roof of the wagon, was to strip off her wet clothes and pull on dry ones. The wet ones she left where they fell – she would never wear them again. As silently as a ghost, she then pulled together her few personal belongings and another change of clothes, packing them in her father’s old knapsack. This was the only thing she had left of him and she had insisted on keeping it when Margarita had sold the wagon and disposed of any contents the new owners didn’t want.

  The next thing she was about to do brought her heart thudding into her throat. The bed on which her grandmother and Franco was sleeping had ornate shelves underneath it with closed cupboards either side, and it was to the left of these that she crept. Praying the door wouldn’t creak, she opened it with trembling fingers and took out her grandmother’s big tin cashbox from behind a pile of blankets. Setting it on her own bed, she took a deep breath. Her grandmother kept the key to the cashbox on a small silver chain that clipped to her belt. It had never been discussed, but Bonnie knew this was to prevent Franco rifling it when he needed extra beer money. It was a bitter bone of contention between the two of them that Margarita saved what she could from any money she made on her stall, along with Bonnie’s takings from her singing, and would never reveal what she put away from one month to the next. On more than one occasion when they barely had enough food to eat Franco had ranted and raved and threatened, but Margarita would not be swayed. Someone had to look to their old age, she always said, and as Franco didn’t have a grain of sense it had to be her.

  Bonnie stared at the narrow ladder that led to the bed above. Could she do this? Could she pluck the belt with the key from where it hung each night on a nail driven into the wood on her grandmother’s side of the bed? What if she woke up? Worse, what if Franco woke up and tried to grab her? She knew if she ever felt his touch on her flesh again she would scream and keep on screaming. But the cashbox was going to be awkward to carry. It wouldn’t fit easily into the knapsack and what if it proved too difficult to force open without the key?

  She stood for a few moments more and then put one foot on the ladder. It didn’t creak under her light weight the way it did when Margarita or Franco used it, and this gave her the courage she needed.

  Franco was lying on his side, one arm flung across her grandma, in exactly the same position she had seen him in with Nelly, and although she couldn’t determine much in the darkness, which was relieved only by a slanting shaft of moonlight through the lace curtains of the tiny window, his black bulk brought bile to her throat. His smell, a mixture of sweat and smoke and a musty odour, was stronger up here in the confined space, and she had to swallow hard several times to prevent herself from being sick. For a wild moment she seriously considered fetching her grandma’s wicked-looking carving knife and plunging it into his chest while he slept. She stood on the ladder, trembling with the force of her hate and the pain caused by his brutality, fighting back the tears.

  She wouldn’t cry again, she told herself fiercely. Now was not the time to weaken. She had to do what she’d set out to do.

  It took a few minutes but then she had control of herself once more. Slowly and carefully, she ascended to the top of the ladder. She knew where the belt would be, which was just as well or else she probably wouldn’t have been able to distinguish it against the wood. As it was, she could just pick out its shape. Although the bed was little more than a large single, she found she still had to put one knee on the mattress in order to stretch across the sleeping occupants. Fortunately the flock mattress was old and lumpy and barely gave an iota, her slender frame making no impact.

  When her fingers closed around the belt that her grandmother had curled into a ring and hooked on the nail, Bonnie’s heart began to race, the blood pounding in her ears. Margarita and Franco were both snoring loudly, their mouths open, and the combined smell of their breath and the bed, and not least Franco, made Bonnie want to gag. Somehow she mastered the reflex, her stomach churning. And then she had lifted the belt from the nail. For a moment she couldn’t believe she had done it. The key tinkled very faintly against the buckle as she drew back, easing herself fully onto the ladder and descending carefully. She sat down on her bed, her legs weak.

  Her hands were shaking as she inserted the little key into the lock of the cashbox. Opening the lid, she found a number of notes along with several velvet pouches obviously containing coins. Her eyes opened wide. She had no idea how much money was here and she had no time to count it, but it was far more than she had imagined her grandmother had secreted away. But then for years her earnings had gone straight into the cashbox – she hadn’t seen a penny – and there had been her da’s wagon and bits of furniture too. This wasn’t stealing, it was claiming what was rightfully hers. Margarita had made her life a misery for as long as she could remember, and the last few years since her da had died had been much worse. And now this with Franco . . .

  Her soft mouth hardened. She didn’t care that her grandma and Franco would be left with nothing, in fact she was glad. She hoped what she had done ate them up, and that every day would be more miserable than the last for the pair of them as their mutual dislike and distrust of each other grew even stronger. And when a tiny thread of guilt at her thinking touched her mind, she straightened, as though throwing something off. No, she wouldn’t feel guilty and she wouldn’t leave so much as a penny in the cashbox, nor would she regret what she was doing in the future. And if any doubts ever crept into her mind, she would remind herself of the young girl standing in the sea, broken in mind and body and asking herself why she didn’t just wade further into the water and let the elements take her to join her parents. But she hadn’t given in to that temptation – she had chosen life, and she would not only survive, but also make a good future for herself. It was all up to her now.

  Stuffing the notes and pouches into the knapsack, she fastened the straps before pulling on the shoes she wore when she sang. Her everyday black boots she left under her bed, along with her serviceable winter coat and hat that had long since seen better days. She wasn’t going to take anything ugly into her new life, and as soon as she could she would buy herself a summer coat and bonnet, and maybe a couple of pretty frocks. Because she would need to look presentable to sing.

  In spite of the pain between her legs, her aching head and her bruises, she felt a tiny frisson of excitement momentarily pierce the anguish. She was going to sing. She was going to become a proper singer, an artiste, or die in the attempt.

  It was six o’clock in the morning when Bonnie got on the train. At the campsite the showmen and their families would be waking to a new day. Fires would be lit and smoke would be spiralling into the blue sky; children would be tumbling about playing, chun
ks of bread and jam clutched in their grubby hands, and the women would be seeing to breakfast while their menfolk busied themselves with the daily work needed to keep the fair running smoothly.

  It was the only life she had ever known and yet she was leaving it without the slightest regret, which probably, she acknowledged, wouldn’t have been the case even twenty-four hours before. But Franco’s attack, coupled with the years of abuse meted out by her grandmother, had severed something deep inside. She wanted done with it all, and with everyone connected to what she was already terming her past life, even her childhood friends and folk like Mrs Carlini and Pedro and Ham. They had all known how cruelly she’d been treated since her da had died, but no one had stood up to Margarita. And she didn’t care that that was the travellers’ way – it was wrong, and that was the end of it.

  It was only as the train began to steam out of the station that Bonnie realized how tense she was. Any moment she had half-expected Franco or her grandmother to appear and try to drag her back to the fair. But she was safe. She had escaped.

  She sank back against the seat, suddenly feeling weak and slightly sick, and she must have looked peaky because an enormously fat woman who had boarded the train carrying two huge wicker baskets crammed with food leaned across and said, ‘You all right, hinny?’ Without waiting for a reply, she added, ‘You had any breakfast?’