Pearl’s voice was a whisper when she said, ‘Well, it started when my brothers were put away . . .’ The telling didn’t take long. When Pearl finished with: ‘People will think I’m bad if they know,’ Corinda let go of the thin hands and drew the child against her breast.
‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you understand? Nothing in the wide world to be ashamed of. Remember that.’ Silently she was reflecting that it was worse than she had expected. For a mother to be party to such a thing was unbelievable. But she did believe Pearl. Every word. ‘And I see no reason why you can’t come along with us, if that’s what you want.’
Pearl’s arms around her waist was her answer. Softly, Corinda said, ‘I’ll need to tell Mackensie and his mother what you’ve told me, but if you don’t want Byron to know, that’s all right.’
Pearl thought for a moment. ‘Byron found me. It’s – it’s right he knows.’
‘Then it will be the four of us and you who are aware of the full facts, that’s all.’ Corinda stood up. ‘I think you’re well enough to get up tomorrow, and in the evening Madora and Freda can move back in and we’ll get back to normal. There’ll be three of you to the bed, but in the past it was four before Leandra and Ellen wed, so you’ll manage.’
This meant the old grandmother would resume sleeping on the bed that became a long seat in the daytime. As yet she hadn’t seen the grandmother, although Madora and Freda had come to say hello, and Byron and his brothers had stood waving outside the window the day before. Mackensie had popped his head round the caravan door several times in order to talk to his wife, but he hadn’t ventured inside and for this Pearl was grateful. She knew he was a nice man – he must be, if he was Corinda’s husband – but everything inside her had shrunk at the proximity of a man. This was the main reason she was terrified at the prospect of leaving the womblike confines of the caravan, even though logic told her she couldn’t hide away for ever.
Perhaps Corinda had sensed how she was feeling because now she said briskly, ‘Madora or Freda will keep you company and show you how things are for the next little while. You won’t be left alone. You understand you will be expected to work to earn your keep? All the children do once they’ve reached five summers. Are you good with your fingers?’
Pearl stared at her. ‘I don’t know.’
Corinda smiled. ‘There’s a skill to making the things we sell but it’s not difficult, and then there’s always the cooking and washing and suchlike.’
Pearl nodded but said nothing. Although she had done the cooking at home she had seen enough from the window to know things were different in the gypsy camp. Probably because it was summer, all the meals were cooked outside the caravans and tents. Iron pots suspended over open fires was the order of the day here. The pots hung from a rod which was shaped like a shepherd’s crook and placed at an angle over the heat of the fire, and she had seen potatoes pushed into the ashes as well as skinned hedgehogs, and fish roasted over the flames on split hazel sticks. Rabbits and pheasants and other meat the gypsies poached always disappeared into the pots shortly after arriving in camp, presumably, Pearl supposed, so that if any gamekeepers came asking awkward questions, the evidence was gone.
Corinda had turned and was making up the narrow seat bed. She brought Pearl’s attention to her again by saying, ‘Go to sleep now, child. Tomorrow will be a new beginning. That’s how you must look at this. The past is gone and nothing can change it, but the future will be what you make of it.’ She straightened, smiling at Pearl who smiled back before obediently sliding under the covers and shutting her eyes.
She knew when Corinda was asleep – Byron’s mother snored, for one thing – and with the camp settled for the night and the moon high in the sky, thoughts crowded into Pearl’s mind. She was feeling much better physically. The dreadful soreness inside had gone, and the pain she’d had when she emptied her bladder had been cured by one of Halimena’s potions. The bottom of her spine still hurt, but it was a dull throb now, like toothache. But as she had got better, the gnawing guilt about leaving James and Patrick had got worse. Today she hadn’t been able to think about anything else. And yet she couldn’t have stayed and done what her mother would have insisted she do. Curling into a little ball, she stifled the sob in her throat by sticking her fist into her mouth and biting hard.
But she would go back one day, she thought, as scalding tears flooded down her face. When she was old enough to be able to stand against her mother and her plans, she would go back and take care of her brothers. Maybe she could find work and earn enough to rent a room so they could live with her? They could manage on very little.
Pipe dreams. The words her mother used to fling at her when she was being scathing about something or other were loud in her head. And anyway, it was now that the little boys needed her. Who would play with them and tell them stories, and wipe their tears when they hurt themselves if she didn’t? Oh, James, Patrick. James, Patrick. How could she have left them? She was wicked, that’s what she was.
It was nearly dawn before she went to sleep, an unquiet sleep filled with hopelessness, heartache and remorse.
Chapter 7
The next morning, Pebarl was visibly trembling as she followed Corinda down the caravan steps. It was one thing to view the gypsy camp through the small window in the caravan, quite another to be thrust into it. It was early, the dawn chorus hadn’t been long finished, but already it promised to be another scorching hot day. All round the camp, fires were lit and the women were preparing breakfast. Mackensie, Halimena and the rest of the Lock family were sitting in the opening to the tent, and as Corinda and Pearl joined them everyone smiled and nodded at her – everyone but Halimena. Byron’s grandmother merely stared long and hard at her before taking the bowl of porridge, stiff with salt, which Madora handed her.
‘Feeling better?’ Eleven-year-old Freda hitched herself closer. ‘I got kicked by a dray horse once and had to stay in bed. I was black and blue all over, wasn’t I, Dai?’
Pearl had gathered by now that ‘Dai’ was the gypsy word for Mother, and as Corinda said shortly, ‘And whose fault was that?’ Pearl smiled at Freda, aware that the other girl was trying to make her feel comfortable.
‘Freda got too close to the milkman’s horse when we were in a town. It had its feeding bag on and she’d been told to stay away from it.’
This snippet was provided by Byron.When Freda turned on her brother, saying indignantly, ‘It wasn’t my fault, it was a mardy old nag,’ he shook his head at Pearl.
She wanted to smile at him but her face felt stiff with nerves. She longed to jump up and run away, go up the caravan steps and shut the door.
Halimena rattled something off in the gypsy tongue, and when Corinda said, ‘All in good time,’ Pearl felt that Byron’s grandmother had been talking about her and that it hadn’t been complimentary. Telling herself she couldn’t cry – not here, not now – she forced herself to eat the porridge, hoping no one would notice how her hands were shaking.
The porridge being washed down by a mug of hot tea which had neither milk nor sugar in it, the family scattered about their business. Mackensie and his sons were going into the next village to do some horse trading outside the public house, Corinda and Madora were tackling the weekly wash, Halimena was sitting in the tent entrance weaving a cabbage net, and Freda had told Pearl to accompany her to where a group of girls about their age were busy weaving rush mats. Later in the week, Freda told her, the camp would be on the move. There was a big fair on the outskirts of Durham where they would be able to sell their wares, trade horses and tell fortunes to the townfolk and ladies of social standing.
The other girls fell silent as Freda and Pearl approached, eyeing Pearl curiously. All of them had brown skin, dark hair and gold hoops in their ears, and were dressed in blouses and skirts, but some were more raggedy than others. The soles of their bare feet had the appearance of being as tough as leather, and they glanced at Pearl’s boots a
nd faded summer dress which she realised made her stick out like a sore thumb from the gypsy children.
‘This is Pearl. She’s living with us now.’ Freda plonked herself down and waved her hand for Pearl to do the same. Starting with the girl nearest to her, she introduced each one. ‘Betsy, Naomi, Sarah, Etty, Jemima and Repronia.’
The names whirled in her mind; she knew she wouldn’t remember who was who. As the other girls began to chatter in their own language, Freda showed her how to begin working the prepared rushes together on a mat which was already half finished. It looked easy, but it wasn’t. The rushes seemed to have a mind of their own and they were sharp and unforgiving on her soft flesh. Furthermore, she couldn’t seem to get them tight enough so they didn’t promptly spring loose and go out of shape. And she knew the other girls were looking at her and laughing at her efforts. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, but she didn’t have to, to know they didn’t like her, that they considered her an outsider. Which she was. She bit down on her bottom lip so the pain would prevent the tears that threatened.
At midday everyone returned to their own caravans and tents for a quick meal. Mackensie and the boys weren’t back and Madora had a pan of potatoes and meat ready which was heavily augmented by mushrooms she’d picked earlier from the fields beyond the camp. In spite of her morning in the fresh air Pearl wasn’t hungry, since misery was weighing her down, but she ate the bowl of food she was given before returning to her task with Freda.
She fared no better with the rushes in the afternoon, and although Freda talked to her now and again, the other girls barely glanced at her. Her fingers were sore, and by evening she had three large blisters. Her back was aching too; the hours of sitting on the ground in one position had set off the nagging pain at the bottom of her spine again. The only thing which gave her a faint trace of comfort was the way Freda had slipped her arm through hers as they walked back to the tent.
A summer twilight richly flavoured by the smell of the campfires had fallen by the time the whole family settled down to eat their evening meal. Mackensie and his sons were in fine fettle; the trading had gone well and one of the landed gentry had bought all four animals for a handsome price and expressed an interest in doing further business the next time the Romanies were in the district.
While they had been waiting for the menfolk to return, Freda had taken Pearl inside the tent. It hadn’t been at all as she had imagined. In fact, the interior had presented an air of luxury. Woven matting covered the whole of the floor, and on top of this reposed a large square of carpet in bright, rich colours. In the middle of the tent a row of cushioned seats sat either side of the carpet with a low table between them, the bedroom areas being curtained off. Several large wicker baskets, presumably holding clothes and bedding, stood behind the seats. Besides the horse-drawn caravan, the family owned an enormous farm cart, pulled by another horse, and it was this which transported the tent and most of their belongings from place to place.
Pearl had stared at the interior of the tent, awed by the comfort and cleanliness, and was overwhelmingly thankful that Freda and the others hadn’t seen Low Street and her beginnings.
‘’Course, not everyone’s as particular as us,’ Freda said with some pride. ‘And some don’t have a caravan and a tent, just one or the other, but Dai was a Buckley and she brought a fine dowry with her. Lots of men wanted her, but she set eyes on Dad when the Buckleys were visiting a horse fair in Ireland at the same time as the Locks – and that was that.’ This was said in a manner which told Pearl it was a favourite story. ‘If Dad had been just a tinker or pedlar like some, likely there’d have been trouble, but the Locks were already the head of ten gypsy families, so that was all right.’
Pearl nodded without really understanding anything other than Freda’s satisfaction in her family’s position within the gypsy community; it was obviously very important to her.
Halimena had been sitting in her chair at the entrance to the tent still weaving cabbage nets to sell as she listened to the two girls’ conversation. Raising her head, she glanced across at her granddaughter. ‘The Locks are as old a tribe as the Buckleys and others. Don’t forget that.’
‘I know.’
Freda’s voice carried a note of indignation but Pearl felt the words had not really been intended for Freda but meant as a message to her. She caught Halimena’s eye; the old woman might be shrunken and wrinkled, but there was something in the round hard eyes that was strong and vital, something she couldn’t put a name to but which filled her with trepidation.
As the sun went down, with blue smoke from the fires curling into the darkening sky, the noise within the camp began to decrease. Younger children were put to bed and the dogs, well fed with scraps from the evening meal, settled down with bones to gnaw under the caravans. Horses which had been having kicking matches or baring their teeth at each other now stood docilely munching at the thick sweet grass at the edge of the camp, and the men sitting by the campfires had something stronger than tea in their mugs. It was the time for pleasure.
Hitherto, confined to the caravan, Pearl had only heard the sound of music and laughter and seen the figures whirling and dancing in the shadows as the twilight had thickened. Now she was part of it. Songs were sung in a soft chant, with violins and mouth organs and the spoons accompanying the dancers, as well as one or two piano accordions. She couldn’t understand what was being sung, it was all in the gypsies’ own language, but it was beautiful. Beautiful and so haunting, at times it caused a physical ache in her chest. She sat quietly beside Corinda and Mackensie as Madora and Freda and the three boys joined in the dancing, even though Freda kept calling to her until spoken to sharply by her grandmother, still sitting at the mouth to the tent behind them.
It was just after this that Corinda said softly, ‘It is our way to have a time together after the work of the day, Pearl. Stories are told and songs are sung and passed on from generation to generation. It’s important our history is kept alive for our children and our children’s children. We have been part of the countryside and lived in harmony with the land for hundreds of years, but the new towns are taking what was once ours. It makes some of our old folk angry and bitter.’
There was a snort behind them but Corinda ignored her mother-in-law and went on, ‘Some of our community are suspicious and wary of non-gypsies because of this. They don’t accept that the only thing we can do to protect our way of life is to adapt to what is happening.’
There was a rustle as Halimena stood up and said something in her sharp voice, to which Mackensie replied, just as sharply. At this Halimena disappeared into the caravan, banging the door behind her. Pearl looked at Corinda but Freda’s mother continued to stare into the flames, her work-roughened hands clasped round her knees and her stance pensive.
Nothing more was said, but shortly after this Corinda called the children and they all went their separate ways, Mackensie and Corinda and the boys into the tent, and Madora and Freda and Pearl into the caravan where Halimena was already stretched out on her narrow bed, apparently asleep.
But Halimena was not asleep. She lay completely still and silent until she was sure the three girls were no longer awake, and then rose, pushing her feet into her boots and pulling her shawl around her shoulders.
It was only Rex, lying outside the entrance to the tent wherein slept his master, who raised his head as Halimena closed the caravan door. When the old woman sat down on the last wooden step he closed his eyes again.
The night was soft and warm, the glow from the dying campfires and the sweet fragrance of woodsmoke drifting on the air as the small, black-clothed figure stared out over the sea of tents and caravans.
It was a bad day when Byron brought that girl into the camp, she thought, her mouth tightening over her full set of teeth, most of which were still strong and whole. She patted her knuckles against her closed lips and looked up into the night sky. And Corinda, allowing a gorgie to sleep and eat and live with them! How
could any good come out of that? That child, with her blue eyes and fair skin, would bring down a curse upon them.
Halimena muttered an incantation to ward off the evil spirits that constantly observed human beings in their foolishness, her gnarled fingers making the signs that had been passed down from her mother and her mother before her to those possessed with the Sight. It was a great disappointment to her that none of her children had inherited the gift, but she lived in hope that one of her grandchildren would show signs of it in the years to come. Of course, most of the women in the camp practised fortune-telling at the fairs and country markets at some time or other, but that wasn’t the true Sight. She sniffed her scorn.
Her thoughts returning to the object of her agitation, she turned her head as though she could see through the caravan door to where Pearl slept between her grand-daughters. In her grandmother’s day, even in her mother’s day, this would never have happened. They would have given succour to the child, maybe even taken her to the gates of the nearest church or habitation, but to allow her to remain with them and learn their ways? Never. Never. There were one or two gypsy families she knew who had allowed their sons or daughters to marry gorgies and dilute the blood, but she would rather die than see such a thing within her own. Not that they were talking about that here, not yet, but the girl was too pretty for her own good even now, her skin as smooth as satin and the colour of fresh cream touched with rose.
Halimena ground her teeth irritably. Corinda was a fool and Mackensie more so for being led by her. No good came from the woman wearing the trousers and the man the petticoat.
She continued to sit brooding for another full hour, thinking up ways and means of forcing Pearl to leave the camp. The blood of two newts, mixed with early-morning dew and a fresh spiderweb, enclosed in an acorn cup and placed under her pillow, would do it, but sleeping with Madora and Freda as she did, that was out of the question. The magic wasn’t discriminating – and what if her grand-daughters up and left too? A longer-term remedy would have to do. The wings and antennae of an Emperor Moth crushed to dust and placed in a person’s boots was known to give them the wanderlust, the same as the seeds of rose-bay willowherb spread over the tailfeather of a swallow and hidden in a person’s belongings ensured that they’d be on the move before the month was out. Mind, the chit had no belongings to speak of, so perhaps the Emperor Moth solution was the one? She could easily sprinkle the powder into Pearl’s boots once she was asleep. And if that didn’t work there were other – stronger – methods she could employ.
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