The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Tom. Having less time for him, I mean,’ said Ellen.

  ‘Oh Gor, who’d be a woman! And you, Ellen, always worried about what you ought, not what you want!’

  ‘If I’d had this other baby I’d have my hands too full to think of anything else.’

  ‘Then get yourself another one, Ellen, and the sooner the better. I’ll try not to think of you and Pa at it. And here was me thinking you could advise me how I am to get a man and not die of boredom and . . . of wanting one. Oh well, must get on! At least there’s less work to this house. My favourite is that privy. You’ve only to go out the back door and there it is on the end of the house, and the bricks inside all painted shiny. Now, how shall we organise things? Upstairs you and Father in the room at the back, with the little room beyond it for Tom, and me at the front so I can see the men going to the tannery of a morning?’

  ‘You’re a terror, Judith Chown!’

  ‘Seriously, Ellen, I should be thanking you. I was going to die a thousand deaths of loneliness in that village with always the same faces to talk to, with everyone knowing if you so much as sneezed and how often you went to the privy – and the young men what were left shrugging their shoulders and making for London or Birmingham and me not allowed to go too . . .’

  ‘You could have gone before now, Judith. The missions are always in need of willing hands.’

  ‘Yes, well, I wasn’t willing! Not for the missions!’

  ‘No, I suppose you weren’t.’ Ellen looked at her stepdaughter standing there, hands on hips, dark bobbed hair coming out of curl, the red laughing mouth. What had Millie Chown been to produce such a girl? Harold was present in the line of her jaw and in the shape of her eyes, but some of the thoughts that lay behind those eyes would turn him pale if Judith had been foolish enough to let her father hear them.

  ‘Will you look for work, Judy, once we’re all settled?’

  ‘Oh, not half! I wouldn’t care if it was just accounts, like at Boddington’s, just to get me out of the house a bit, even if Pa don’t like me working. I’ll see if they need anyone at the tannery. I think I could bear even the stink of the place for the company I’d have there.’

  ‘I’ll back you up. Your poor father does love you, though, Judy,’ said Ellen.

  Judith frowned. ‘I know. But I know I’m a disappointment to him. Everything he does is just Christian duty to him. Even being married to you, Ellen, though I was the first person to see that he really was gone on you. But he’d rather the world thought he wanted to help a young widow than that he was beside himself with love.’

  ‘What young widow?’

  ‘That’s what he wants to put about. You had a husband. An Italian stone-mason, apparently – he had an accident at work. Accounts for Tom’s lovely dusky skin, you see. Stops the gossips.’

  ‘So Sam never existed. What am I to tell Tom?’

  ‘Cross that bridge when you have to.’

  CHAPTER 19

  I thought of the men I was leaving behind, of those men who had become my friends.

  Wilfred Macartney, Walls Have Mouths

  Freed

  Winchester, May 1924

  ‘Take your boots off, B2.26, and stand here.’

  The screw was shorter than Sam, and had to stand on a box to bring the crossbar of the yardstick down on the top of his head.

  ‘Five feet eleven,’ the man sang out.

  ‘Taller than most of his tribe,’ commented the warder, who was sitting at the desk, filling in a chart.

  ‘On the scales, prisoner . . . Place your feet square . . . Ten stone four! All right, get down, and take your shirt off. Hands on your head. What age are you?’

  ‘I’m not rightly sure. Twenty-eight, p’raps.’

  The man at the desk looked at him directly for the first time. ‘You don’t know how old you are? Well, what am I supposed to put here?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. What about putting what it was a year ago, plus one?’

  The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Less of your lip.’ Yet he quietly consulted the record and did as Sam suggested.

  ‘Continue.’

  ‘Black hair, slight curl, going grey at the temples. Skin swarthy. Eyes dark brown. Clean-shaven. Open your mouth, prisoner. Teeth look sound, far right incisor broken.’

  A tape measure was passed loosely and rapidly round Sam’s chest, then dropped to his waist.

  ‘Forty . . . thirty-four.’

  The clerk glanced up at Sam’s thin frame. ‘Really?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘All right. Corresponds to what he came in with. Scars?’

  ‘Through left eyebrow, about one inch.’

  ‘How sustained? Speak up, B2.26!’

  ‘Lincoln.’

  ‘Well, as long as it wasn’t here. Any others, George?’

  ‘Hallo! Back and shoulders full of them. Puss has been at him. But there are lots of older ones – not cat scars. Little white pits all over the place – fifteen, at least, or more like twenty. What’s this then, prisoner?’

  ‘Family argument, you med say.’

  The screw whistled. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay in here?’

  His colleague laughed. Sam said nothing.

  *

  ‘I’ll miss you, Sam, more than I can say!’

  ‘I’ll miss you too, Cecil. I cannot remember a man who has shown me kindness like yours. Teaching an ignorant fellow to read.’

  ‘The debt is on my side. You’ve helped me find meaning in my life. Before I came here, I never really considered who my fellow men were. This place is as much a leveller of men as death. I thought there were learned men, and ignorant ones – but I know now the ignorant ones are often the wiser. For me there were good men, and then there were felons – like pure women, and fallen ones. I can never say this to Beth, but had I not come here, I would never have found my calling. I wouldn’t go back to the genteel boredom of a village rectory now even if they’d have me. I hope it won’t be the malarial swamp, though. The chaplain says he will speak to the bishop when the time comes. Perhaps I could be useful in the East End.’

  ‘Now that’d be twice as dangerous as the swamp, Cecil!’

  ‘Write to me, Sam.’

  ‘My writing ain’t much good yet, as you know.’

  ‘Not true. But if you like, I’ll bring you the corrections later!’

  ‘Ain’t you cleared your cell yet, Loveridge? Move yourself!’

  ‘I mun go.’

  ‘Bless you, Sam! Promise me that I shall meet your Ellen one day!’

  ‘She ain’t my lawful wedded, Cecil. Nor can be.’

  ‘Let God be your judge, not men.’

  *

  The cell was soon emptied of Sam’s pitiful possessions: a prison-issue Bible he was allowed to keep, a pair of canvas slippers, several pages of painstaking exercises done for Cecil, and a regulation toothbrush. Sam had never owned one before, relying on apples to keep his teeth in his head. Now those teeth were clean, but felt loose. In a year he had not eaten any fresh fruit, nor vegetables other than those boiled to slush. By some perverse logic of the prison system, his last night was to be spent in a punishment cell.

  P’raps it’s to remind me not to come back. He descended the clanging stairs of B Hall for the last time.

  *

  After Sam had eaten his last prison breakfast the following morning, sitting on his blankets in the furnitureless, featureless cell, a screw stuck his head in and handed him a bedsheet.

  ‘Strip, Loveridge, and wrap this round you.’

  Oh dordi, what now?

  Instead, he was instructed to walk out barefoot on the cold, waxed stone floor of the hall and into the neighbouring cell. Here he found a forlorn, limp pile of clothes, unmistakeably his own, but stale and crumpled, as though all the fight had been beaten out of them. He dressed slowly. His boots felt too big. Only his hat felt familiar. He picked up the small canvas bag containing hi
s few belongings, and found the two shilling pieces he had had on him when he was arrested, along with an envelope containing some coins earned sewing mailbags and a further shilling from the Prisoners’ Aid Society. But his writing exercises were gone. He was searching for them when the screw came back for him.

  ‘No written materials to be taken out of the prison. Regulations,’ said the man. ‘Now just your photographs and you’ll be out of here. We hope not to have the pleasure of your company again.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Just one question. Was there any letters for me?’

  ‘Letters? No. Everything is in that bag.’

  *

  Two other men were released with Sam. He didn’t know either; they were from other halls, and both were met, one by his mother, another by a bedraggled wife and four small children, whom he barely acknowledged despite their clamour. The light and the noise stunned Sam and he leaned back against the great door. He had counted weeks, days, then hours up to this point. He could now write a simple, if somewhat ungrammatical, letter, sign his name, and with some effort read straightforward notices, and whilst he could copy these exactly when they were in front of him, found that his memory did not always oblige when away from them. He had also learned some basic arithmetic, which he took to readily, enjoying the idea that there was always an answer, and one only. But that numeracy was also now a burden. It parcelled up the world for him. He could count the strokes of the prison bell and know what time it was, and what he was supposed to do when, and how long he had to do it in, none of which necessarily coincided with either how long the task in hand actually took, nor his desire to do it. And now he had time of his own. It crashed over him, as overwhelming as a tidal wave.

  He looked at the flow of people, each one a world to himself: going to work, taking the baby for an airing, leading a horse. He saw with astonishment what he had not been able to see a year ago – that signs painted on the sides of carts, on the façade of the pub opposite, meant something. Words spoke to him as loudly and distractingly as noise – so many of them! How long would it take him to see the world normally again?

  These togs smell like grave-clothes, they’ve been put away so long. He fidgeted. Stop shivering! The sun’s warm enough!

  He looked at the pub. A pint of ale, air thick with tobacco smoke – perhaps someone would oblige him with a cigarette? It looked like a simple enough place. He creaked his legs into a walk and set off towards it, then – ‘Oi! ’ – he had to jump back to avoid a brewer’s dray. How could he have missed something so large? And had cart-horses got bigger since he’d been inside? He pushed open the door. The familiarity of the warm, beery fug that greeted him brought tears to his eyes. But there was no greeting in the landlady’s face. She looked him up and down, took in his crumpled, ill-fitting clothes, the prison-patina of his skin, the little bag on his shoulder. She raised a hand from the bar and her forefinger ticked back and forth like a metronome. The three or four customers in the place watched him in bored curiosity as he backed out of the door and back into the merciless sunlight.

  What now? Where now? He stood outside and watched the mass of people and carts. Instinct made him want to go where there were fewer of his fellow human beings to see him, but he knew that a man is less visible in a crowd, so he followed the drift of people until it led him into the town. He walked as in a daze, shambling, and was dimly aware that others stood back to avoid him, for the noise, the light, the colours still disorientated him. Finally, panting, he turned off the maze of streets into an alley and came on a little white-washed church with a patch of garden before it. The noise behind him diminished as though someone had closed a door. The door to the church, however, stood open.

  They can’t turn me out of here, can they? he thought. There had not been much to look at in the prison chapel; he had gone there to hear the words spoken in that gaunt place, and to follow the tracery of the windows, high and luminous, unlike the barred rectangle of light in his cell, but he had never been able to go there alone, or when he chose.

  The space in this church was also light and airy, but some of the glass was coloured, and of such joyful brightness that it brought tears to his eyes for the second time that morning. Here was the scent of beeswax and incense, lifesize benevolent plaster statues frozen in the act of blessing or of offering flowers, and best of all the silence of reflection, not fear. A rack of candles shimmered at a side altar, and three or four shawled women huddled separately in the pews. An upright wooden structure, as sombre as a coffin, yet hung with little red curtains like a Punch and Judy booth, stood against a side wall. For a moment Sam struggled to breathe; it looked exactly like the condemned pew in the prison chapel. He heard a bubble of childish laughter and a little girl in a gingham dress ran in below one of the curtains, followed by the clang of her father’s nailed boots on the tiled floor.

  ‘Don’t strike the little maid,’ he muttered under his breath. Some muffled giggles and the child was lifted out; he heard the slap of her sandals as she was placed upright. The man bent over her, his hand on her back. She looked up at him and took his hand. Sam saw them approach one of the candle racks, heard the clatter of a coin against metal, and watched the rapt face of the child as two candles were lit in front of her.

  If I’d been a father it might all have been different.

  He sat forward, his face in his hands.

  Help me find my way back to her.

  Someone scuffled in the pew behind him, and cleared his throat ostentatiously. Then a loud whisper: ‘Sam!’

  ‘Vanlo! ’

  ‘I’m supposed to be following you.’

  ‘Well, you aren’t now. How did you know it was today?’

  ‘I remembered from the court. And then when I knew a year was almost up, I pestered any gaujo I could get a hold of to tell me what date it was.’

  ‘You’re a smart boy. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you again. You’re quite the man now. You rommered yet?’

  ‘No! Nor want to be.’

  ‘All right, don’t take on so. You’re wise enough, anyroad. But why didn’t you just come to meet me?’

  ‘Lukey wanted to know where you’d go first.’

  ‘Where is she now? Lukey, I mean.’

  ‘That place. Surman’s Wood.’

  ‘Dordi! What’s she about?’

  ‘I’m not s’posed to have tole you that. Lukey wanted to see where you went first – if you looked for us or for the other lady. That’s why they’re in Surman’s Wood. If you goes to that village, she’ll know – she’ll have catched you.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to walk right into her trap, then . . . Why do you look so pleased about it?’

  Vanlo puffed out his meagre chest. ‘I’d do the same, Sam.’

  ‘Oh Vanlo, you shouldn’t go looking up to me, chavvi,23 ’twill only get you in trouble.’

  ‘Again! You med say this is me gettin’ another chance. See if I do right this time.’

  ‘Have you seed her then? Did you stop in Surman’s Wood last harvest?’

  ‘No, I ain’t seen the lady. We went up Banbury way instead, but the place wasn’t so good. It was her that decided – Lukey, I mean.’

  ‘All that time I was inside, Vanlo, I thought about being in the wood with her. But I med as well have been outside there in the street with the world watching us.’

  One of the shawled women turned round and held her finger to her lips.

  ‘So why did you keep quiet?’ Sam went on, whispering now.

  ‘’Cause I never saw Lukey kiss you the way that maidy did. I’d not leave someone who liked me that much.’

  ‘Come on, then. We’ll work out what to say on the way. I’ll make sure you arrive after me – so they still think you’ve been following.’

  ‘How was it, Sam? In there, I mean?’

  ‘Horrible. But it wasn’t so much being in there that was bad, as not being out here, if you see what I mean.’

  *

  ‘You know I ca
n’t take you on now, Sam, much as I’d wish it.’

  Horwood rested his elbow on the back of the cart, and looked away.

  ‘That’s not why I came. It’s Ellen Quainton I’m after. Could you at least tell me where she’s gone?’ said Sam. ‘I made sure the old man was out of the way first, but then her mother shut the door in my face and told me from behind it to leave them all in peace, on her Christian soul.’

  ‘’Tis as well you didn’t see Oliver. He’s a peaceable man most times, but a stern one and a slave to his principles. And he’s vowed to horsewhip you should you ever show your face round here again. I swear he was waiting for you to turn up last year.’

  ‘I would have come, only I was prevented.’

  ‘Prevented? Or were you ’fraid to come? You’ve caused a good family no end of trouble and shame, Sam.’

  ‘Who is that you’re a talking to, Father?’

  ‘Reggie!’

  ‘No, don’t you go in there, Sam! He wept when you went away without a word, but he always talked fondly of you—’

  ‘Who is it? Will you not bring him here for me to see?’

  ‘Please go, Sam. He’ll try and struggle out with his chair on his own in a moment. Don’t raise his hopes again.’

  ‘All right, I’ll go. But thank you for talking to me, sir, when no one else will.’

  Sam set off slowly along the dirt track away from Horwood’s farm. He was almost at the road when he heard the thud of running feet behind him. He spun round, instinctively raising his fists, then lowered them at once on seeing it was Horwood.

  ‘Sam – your wages. I never got to pay you last time.’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Come on, take ’em, you earned ’em. And for Reggie’s sake I’ll wish you well.’

  ‘Then thank you. I’ll take the money, for God knows I’ll need it. But don’t wish me well, wish all good on her, if you may.’

  ‘Sam, I can’t tell you where she is and I’m not sure I would if I did know. But she’s wed, Sam.’

  ‘Wed? ’

  ‘The husband took her as a favour, being a friend of her grandfer’s and not far off the same age as her father would have been had he lived.’