The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  *

  Sam always enjoyed the opening of a new field at harvest. He took his place in the row of men, each an equal distance apart, scything down the first row of corn so that the horses wouldn’t trample it. As the other men tied up the first sheaves with twine, the only ones that would be made up by hand that day, he went to prepare the three horses who would be pulling the reaper-binder. This was the part of the work he liked best, setting the rhythm of the animals to the turn of the machine. The mechanism was simple, but it delighted him: an invention that would cut and also tie, but which depended, as farming always had, on the tractability of the animals that pulled the machine forward. He liked being the man most trusted to operate Horwood’s apparatus, chosen for it by his employer as the one with the best touch with horses. Caley, Liberty and Vanlo worked with the other men to build the sheaves into stooks as they fell, fashioned as if by magic from the machine. Sam whistled and sang tunelessly above the thrum of the motor, as if his heart would burst with happiness.

  ‘Yorn Gippo is like a boy in love, to hear ’en,’ called one of the older hands to his nearest companion. Liberty swung round to scowl at the speaker, but the man had turned to catch the next sheaf and didn’t see him.

  CHAPTER 9

  Pawnie birks my men-engri shall be;

  Yackors my dudes like ruppeney shine;

  Atch meery chi! Ma jal away:

  Perhaps I may not dick tute kek komi.9

  George Borrow, Romano Lavo-Lil

  Virgin Knot

  ‘I brought this . . . it’s quite clean.’

  Sam spread the blanket on the ground. ‘Come, sit here next to me. It’s a good place. Nobody can see us here, but if someone comes along the path down there we’ll hear them.’

  ‘But won’t they hear us?’ said Ellen.

  ‘Depends what we do . . . but we’ll hear what comes up from the hollow more than what goes down. I can hunt, remember?’

  ‘Poach, you mean.’

  ‘If you must. But no keeper’s took me yet.’ His fingers drifted over her cheek. ‘Don’t be afraid, Ellen.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘How could I not be? I’m wronging my wife—’

  ‘No, we are.’

  ‘Me most of all – I made her a promise. If they get wind of it back there I’ll cop it from her brothers so’s you wunt recognise me again. But I’m more scared of how much I want to be with you. We’ll move on, as we always do, but then I’d not see you till this time next year – when I dunt know how I’m to stand a world without you.’

  ‘I’m only scared of what my life would’ve been if I’d never met you, Sam,’ she said, nestling against him. ‘But harvest always comes round again.’

  ‘It does. But a whole year . . . Choomande, Ellen!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kiss me, lovely girl.’

  When they at last drew apart he said, his breath warm on her face, ‘Will you unbutton my shirt? I want you to feel my heart beating.’

  She did so, and cautiously slipped her hand inside, marvelling at the warmth of the taut, tawny skin, stroking the drift of silky dark hairs on his breastbone.

  ‘You’re so . . . alive, Sam!’

  He laughed. ‘I’ve never bin so glad to be so.’ He covered her hand with his and guided it to where the hairs grew more densely, round his navel. She heard his breath catch.

  ‘I’ve never been touched so gently, Ellen . . .’ He removed his hand from where it held hers. Her heart tight, she tentatively explored the secret skin of his waist, his ribs.

  ‘May I?’ he murmured, fingertips tentatively at the collar of her blouse.

  ‘Yes, Sam,’ she whispered, her face burning.

  ‘Them buttons of yours is tiny, though.’

  ‘Let me.’

  He pushed the blouse back and kissed her shoulders, then nuzzled into her neck.

  ‘I love the smell of your skin, Ellen.’ His hand slid across her chemise, coming to rest beneath her breast. ‘Oh my girl!’

  I could die of this, she thought, and hardly believing her own daring, guided his hand upwards. He kissed her, kneading her breast gently, groaning softly into her mouth. Ellen opened her eyes to see his closed. He opened them, drew back, smiled. He looked young, ecstatically so, warm and flushed, his chest rising and falling within the opened shirt.

  He said, ‘Oh Ellen, if you could see your lovely face. What a flower it is! Do you . . . do you love me, Ellen?’

  ‘Oh yes!’

  ‘Will you come here tomorrow? Will you let me love you then?’

  ‘I . . . yes, yes, Sam.’

  He walked her to the path, and looking in both directions before he did so, kissed her again.

  ‘Tomorrow, then.’

  ‘Tomorrow, Sam.’

  ‘I love you, Ellen. I daren’t, but I do all the same.’

  *

  Judith called at the Quainton cottage after tea. ‘Come out a minute, can you, Ellen?’ she said, leaning against the door into the scullery where Ellen was drying crockery.

  ‘Just a minute then,’ said Ellen, glad of the distraction. She hung up the tea towel on its rack and untied her apron. They went out onto the lane and walked in the direction of the bench by the parish church.

  ‘What about this one?’ said Judy, flopping down and waving a three-month-old copy of the Illustrated London News under her friend’s nose.

  ‘What? Oh, those pictures . . .’

  ‘You’re jumpy, Ellen. What is it?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Ellen. ‘Which one is it?’ Her head on one side, she concentrated on studying the photograph.

  ‘That one.’

  ‘Yes, I could do that, I think. Maybe box pleats instead of these knife ones – they’ll stay in better. Where did you get this?’

  ‘Lightfoot’s secretary – her with the bristly chin. Pa’s terrified of her. She thinks he needs to be married, see, and is nice to me because of it.’

  ‘Oh dear, poor lady!’

  ‘Poor us, Ellen.’

  ‘Judith,’ began Ellen, her heart jumping in her throat. ‘What would you do if you liked a man, but knew you couldn’t have him?’

  Judith looked intently at Ellen. Eventually she said: ‘I’d have him anyway. I’d let him, I mean.’

  ‘Oh Judy!’

  ‘Only if I thought he liked me as much as I liked him, I mean. I’d rather have a memory of him than nothing at all – something to think about more’n looking at pictures in magazines, and dreaming.’

  ‘But it’s sinful . . . and what if you started a baby?’

  ‘Sinful?’ said Judy. ‘You don’t still believe that, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I believe now, Judy.’

  ‘That’s what they’d say in the chapel, of course. But it’s different now, I’m sure of it. Since the war, I mean. Life’s too short.’

  ‘I’m sure a girl always has to pay, Judy, same as she’s always done.’

  ‘Ellen, what are you up to?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I just wondered was there more than this – this life we have.’

  *

  Beneath the canopy of beech trees, he murmured, ‘Am I hurting you?’

  ‘No, Sam,’ she lied.

  Tight, he thought. It’s been a long time for her, poor girl.

  ‘I am hurting you. I can stop,’ he said, not sure if he could.

  ‘No, don’t!’

  ‘Dordi!10 Oh Ellen! Hold me!’

  So this is what it’s like, she thought. What no one talks about but everyone must do when God joins them. I’ve done wrong but I’d do anything to have Sam’s face looking down on me always. I love him. I don’t care if it’s wrong. I have this, forever, no matter what happens now.

  She moved her hands under his unbuttoned shirt, stroking his back, down to the rise of his buttocks, cool in the evening air, feeling him dwindle and slip out of her.

  ‘Let me look at you, Ellen!’ He smiled down at her, then eased
away, uncovering her opened blouse, her rucked-up skirts. His gaze fell on her white splayed legs and he thought with immense tenderness: Pale and weak as a little frog on its back. Then she saw with horror his expression change; he looked away from her, tugging frantically at tufts of grass, trying to clean himself.

  ‘Ratti! ’11 he shouted, forgetting the need to be quiet. ‘Mochadi! ’12

  ‘Sam?’ She sat up. ‘What did you say, Sam? Tell me what I did wrong!’ Starting to cry, she pushed down her skirts and fumbled with her blouse buttons. So all the warnings were true, then. Give him what he wants and he’ll not want you more.

  ‘Couldn’t you have said, Ellen? I’d have waited if you’d only said you’d your sickness. Oh dordi!’

  ‘What sickness?’ she wept.

  ‘It’s unclean! This . . . blood. You’ve made me unclean!’

  ‘Isn’t it meant to be like that – the first time?’ she sobbed. ‘You must know better than I!’

  A moment later he was holding her close, crying, ‘Ellen, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know!’ and rocking her from side to side as if she was a child needing to be comforted.

  ‘You never did this before?’ he whispered.

  ‘No!’ she gulped between sobs.

  ‘What about your Charlie?’

  ‘No! Poor Charlie . . . We were going to wait, do what was right, obey what we were told was God’s law, but God took him just the same!’

  ‘Oh my poor girl . . . But that makes you mine, always and always.’

  ‘What if I got in the family way, Sam?’

  ‘You can’t with me.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Lukey’s sickness is that reg’lar it comes nearly at the same time of day – that’s how I know the fault must be mine. But I don’t want to talk about her – not now. If I got a baby with you no man could be more pleased than me.’ He kissed her rapidly, all over her face.

  ‘I don’t want to go home, Sam.’

  ‘No more do I.’ But a note of resignation had crept into his voice. The mention of ‘home’ for each of them brought into focus a place where they were not together, where other rules applied, where both would have to lie.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ellen, it’s not much of a wedding night, this. But lying here like this we can pretend it is.’

  They lay facing each other; she turned back his shirt and laid her cheek against his skin, her head beneath his chin. With his arms round her, Ellen felt protected from the entire world.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy, Sam – nor so scared!’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Look up at those trees. Look how friendly they are, stretching their branches across to shelter us – better than any bed canopy.’

  For a moment Sam was transported back to his vardo, the built-in bed behind the sliding engraved glass panels, his mother’s cot beneath. He tensed.

  ‘What is it, Sam?’

  ‘I want to be with you like this forever, Ellen. Not just harvest time, I mean. I mun work out how – how I can have you by me.’ His arms tightened. ‘It won’t be easy – not for me, nor for you. Too many rules to break. Laws of the tribe and laws o’ God – or what men say the laws o’ God are.’

  ‘I wonder, Sam, what God they’re talking about when they talk about His laws. Seems to me they make the laws themselves then stick God’s name on them, so nobody questions them.’

  ‘That’s what I thought in France.’

  ‘When I was a little girl it was all so certain. We were the converted. We lived by the word of the Lord who would not abandon us in our need. But He did, Sam, He did! Even though we were supposed to have all the answers, it was all there for us in the scriptures and every preacher who stood in that pulpit made us even more sure we were right – right when the church people weren’t and when even the Wesleyans were on the wrong path. We were promised the joys of heaven but sometimes I wish there was a little room for joys now. We had all those prayers for victory, but there must’ve been German girls who gave out the same prayers, to the same God. I don’t know what I believe now, I’m sure I don’t, and that’s made me feel more alone than I’ve ever been. And the Lord knows I’ve been so lonely, though I’ve a mother who loves me and Grandfer who protects me. But I’ve spent my life, Sam, being good, doing what I was told . . . and for what? To lose Charlie. To be on my own, always wondering. Then you came along . . .’

  ‘And you saw your chance?’ He was smiling.

  ‘No, not like that! I couldn’t stop thinking about you after that first time I saw you. I feel special when I’m with you; I feel pretty, which I haven’t felt since the telegram came and I thought I’d never smile again, let alone that anyone would kiss me – or that I’d want him to.’

  ‘I’ll kiss you for the rest of your life if you’ll let me.’

  ‘Oh Sam, how?’

  ‘Come away with me. You’ll have to, now you’re mine.’ He said this as a thing obvious and decided.

  ‘What about your wife?’

  ‘She dunt love me. I dunt know as she ever did, really. But once our names was linked it’d have been shameful for her if I’d walked away. Pa wouldn’t have lived that down either – I’d’ve been sent away, like I’d be sent away now, for you. Come with me, Ellen. Only, I’ll have to take my old mother with me . . . I’ll need to tell her that’s what we mun do. I can’t leave her with them Bucklands. I’ll tell her tonight, once I’ve made sure nobody is earwigging . . .’

  Ellen lay quiet as the world pressed in on her. She’d go anywhere with Sam, she knew. All he had to do was pull her to her feet and take her hand. If it could only be like that: to walk up onto the road and hail the next farm cart going towards Oxford, or Reading. But this old lady, his mother? She thought of Grace Lambourne alone in her cottage with the photograph of Charlie in his puttees, posed incongruously beside the photographer’s flower pot, against a painted backdrop of a countryside that looked nothing like the one he had grown up in. She thought of her own timid mother, fearful of her father-in-law, but more fearful of being alone.

  ‘I’ll need to tell mine, too. But she’d never come with us. I don’t know how I should get to see her again. Oh Sam, it’s too much for me to take in! You do a private thing but then it’s suddenly everybody’s business.’

  ‘There’s time to think what to do – how to do it, I mean,’ he said gently. ‘The wagons won’t pull off now till into September. But when they do, I shan’t be with ’em. It’ll be you and me as will face the world together.’

  ‘Do you mean that, Sam?’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘Do you love me, Ellen?’

  ‘You know I do!’

  ‘Then I mean it all right. Now, seeing as them blouse buttons aren’t done up, let me show you how much I mean it.’

  *

  The shadows were lengthening as Ellen walked slowly home. She looked with wonder at her familiar surroundings. How could they still be the same, when she was so utterly changed? How could the cottage still be there, with Oliver pulling off his boots, her mother spooning the tea leaves into the warmed pot?

  How will they not know what’s happened? I’m not the person they thought I was – not now.

  *

  Ellen woke the following morning at cockcrow, but instead of immediately fumbling for her slippers to run out to the privy, she lay in bed, a bar of sunlight slanting the floorboards through the gap in the curtains. There was no urgency to move, but she’d have to empty the chamberpot, for her night had been restless. Under the bedclothes, she stealthily lifted her nightgown and explored. Ow! He said it only hurt the first time, but when does it stop hurting?

  *

  The morning passed in a daze. Voices came at her from far-off, her actions automatic, until one customer jolted her into consciousness. Mrs Larden came in, wanting a spool of ivory twist. Ellen nodded and opened the drawer, and in that action remembered that the woman had come in for precisely that item only da
ys previously. She looked up in surprise, to be met with Mrs Larden’s unswerving gaze, and flushed.

  ‘I thought you already had this, Mrs Larden?’ she stuttered.

  ‘P’raps I have. No law against coming back for more, is there?’

  ‘Oh . . . no, of course not.’

  ‘That’s what you do when you’re onto a good thing, don’t you? Go back for more, I mean,’ said Mrs Larden, smiling unpleasantly.

  ‘Indeed . . . Shall I wrap it for you?’

  ‘No need. Thank you.’

  *

  Ellen ran to their appointment. What if he’s not there? What’ll I say to him if he is?

  He was.

  ‘My Ellen!’ he exclaimed, bending his face to hers.

  ‘Come to the stream with me,’ he said eventually. He took her hand and they walked on the springy earth under the trees towards the babble of water.

  ‘When did you last bathe in running water, my Ellen?’

  ‘Me? Oh, not since I was a little girl – with Judy. It was about here, in fact. I’ve never told anyone that.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to bathe you now. However does this come undone?’

  ‘We can’t, Sam, someone might see us!’

  ‘They’ve not seed us before now, lovely lady mine.’

  ‘But it’s one thing to . . . to have to button things up in a hurry if we hear a twig snap, and quite another to be all wet and to be spied on. And besides, we’ll have precious little warning if someone comes this way for we’ll not hear him for the sound of the water.’

  ‘I have you thinking like a Gypsy already, Ellen!’ he said approvingly, but went on steadily undressing her.

  ‘You’re wearing them horrible underthings again,’ he said. ‘You ain’t kind to them pretty birks keeping ’em all crushed like that. And as for all them clips . . . they’re put there to drive a man mad. Turn round.’