The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  We have had a very successful cake day for the Chapel Aid Association and Judy has also agreed to sing in Iolanthe in aid of the great work done in Fernando Po but I do not know what part. She sings loudly when she wants to, as you know, but I think does not like to be told she might be more tuneful. I believe I told you we have two young men from the congregation going for training in Hartley; I have written to John that he may make them welcome.

  Please give my love to Grace Lambourne when you see her next and to all who remember me with kindness and tell them I will never forget them.

  Your loving daughter,

  Ellen

  With this letter Ellen enclosed a smaller piece of paper folded over many times. She experimented with different ways of putting both into the envelope, envisaging the folded paper falling out in front of Oliver.

  Mother, I have lately discovered that letters have been sent to me that have not been forwarded. I can guess why this is but I am sure you will agree that it is wrong to withhold them and perhaps not legal. If you know about them tell me, and if you have them forward them as soon as you can for they are mine.

  Ellen had no idea whether keeping letters back did amount to a crime, but she knew enough about her mother to know that ‘perhaps not legal’ was enough to frighten her into action. Poor soul – but I must know if he is telling the truth.

  *

  Three days later Sam was doing what he had once enjoyed most in life: sitting atop the steps of his own vardo, holding the reins lightly and watching the breeze lift the horse’s mane. Lucretia sat beside him as she had all their married life, but stiff and silent. When she had first joined him on his vardo she had chattered ceaselessly about the people they had met at their last atchin tan, or the sales that she had made at the houses – which gauje ladies had driven a hard bargain, and who had been gullible. Her wit had made him laugh to begin with, but after a while it wore him down – there was no kindness in it.

  Now he could hear uninterrupted the sound he loved, the regular clop of hooves, and feel beneath him the swaying rhythm of their progress, following the gentle list left and right of Liberty’s wagon as it moved on in front of him against the sweep of blue Kentish sky. Caley’s wagon followed Sam’s, as if the brothers needed to keep him hemmed in. Not much risk of me making a break for it, with her alongside me, he thought. But these familiar sensations didn’t comfort him as they once had. Every pace of the horse took him away from where he most wanted to be, he who had never wanted to stop in one place for longer than the task in hand.

  ‘Canterbury,’ he murmured.

  ‘What’s that you’re muttering?’ asked Lukey. ‘Can’t hear you, Sam, you miserable mush. Face as long as a coffin, you have!’

  ‘Nothing, Lukey, nothing you’d care about.’

  ‘It’s the old gel you’re worryin’ about, ain’t it, Sam?’ she said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘We’ll get her a drabengro25 at Maidstone if you like.’

  ‘No drabengro. Ma knows what she’s doing – knows herself best.’

  *

  ‘We’ve to meet him at the bandstand,’ said Judith. She and Ellen were walking along the avenue of lime trees in Dane John Gardens. The boys had already veered off onto the grass, where they kicked up drifts of fallen leaves and took possession of the space like birds freed from a cage.

  ‘What is it, Ellen? You look all wobbly.’

  ‘It’s just that this is a lovely thing to do, Judy – a girl to meet her young man in the park on a Saturday afternoon. No need to worry about who might see you. Just to walk under these trees in autumn and be glad you’re both alive!’

  ‘He’s found you, Ellen. He’s sure to be back. Oh look – there’s Walter!’

  A man strode across the grass towards them. Ellen saw a broad face, eyes spaced far enough apart to give him a candid look, a slightly snub nose and a mouth that seemed perpetually amused. He smiled, revealing clean, crooked teeth. Walter was sturdily built and scrubbed; he wore a Sunday suit, with a fresh collar on a shirt that had seen a little too much blue-bag, and he smelled of tar soap, which didn’t quite mask an insistent whiff of sour animal fat. Ellen thought him not handsome, but attractive, vivid.

  ‘Walter Graves,’ he said, putting out his hand to Ellen. ‘You don’t look much like a wicked stepmother to me, if I may say so! I hope you’ll excuse me a moment.’ And, releasing Ellen’s hand from his reassuring grip, he slipped an arm round Judy’s waist and kissed her neck. She giggled and pretended to push him away.

  Ellen felt suddenly much older, overwhelmed by their exuberance – dull Harold’s wife, not the girl who had cried out in Sam’s arms in Surman’s Wood.

  ‘Boys!’ called Judy. ‘Come and say hello to Walter!’

  Tom and David had given up on the leaves and were shrieking their way round the Boer War memorial, but without slowing up they veered and ran towards the little group, faces uplifted, shining. Ellen began to relax at last. Their dear little coats . . . and those chubby knees!

  Walter ruffled Tom’s hair. ‘You’re a fine young shaver! Heard all about you! And this little fellow must be David . . . want to come with us for pop and buns?’

  *

  ‘I like him, Judith,’ said Ellen as they began to walk home, the boys tired out by fresh air and ginger beer. ‘I think he’s just right for you.’

  ‘I knew it was him, Ellen, from the first time he came into the office for his pay and he looked over the counter to where my place is and asked Miss Edwards what my name was, but so’s I could hear him. Pa won’t like him, I’m sure of it. A man who works with his hands, enjoys the odd smoke. Lives with his mother – a char. But I did want him to meet you. Good with the boys, ain’t he?’

  ‘Yes. I think they don’t get enough fun with just us, Judith.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you like him. I hoped you would, not least because I want you to help us.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, just tell the odd fib about where I am – should you be asked, of course.’

  ‘I don’t find lies easy, not even little ones, Judy. But if someone does come back again—’

  ‘You’ll need to get used to them. He’ll come back all right. Our secret, Ellen.’

  ‘Our secret, Judy.’

  ‘The boys, though . . .’

  ‘About Walter?’ said Ellen. ‘We’ll just say we met friends from the tannery. That’d be true. But you know Harold doesn’t ask them much. As long as they are neat and clean, and have good table manners, and say their prayers . . .’

  ‘I expect you’re right. I used to get away with murder because he’d never think to ask what I was up to. Oh Ellen . . . look at that South African obelisk.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Doesn’t it remind you of anything – a man’s thing?’

  ‘Oh Judy!’

  25 Doctor or apothecary; drab can mean medicine, or poison.

  CHAPTER 23

  The community whose operations penetrate most deeply through the lower sections of the people is the body called Primitive Methodists . . . their rough, informal energy is best adapted to the class to which it is addressed . . . for every convert added to their ranks, society retains one criminal, one drunkard, one improvident, less.

  Horace Mann, Census of

  Religious Worship, 1851

  The Borough Chapel

  Canterbury, November 1926

  That Sunday, Harold led his family to one of the forms placed sideways to the rostrum.

  ‘Why are we sitting up here, Harold?’ Ellen whispered.

  ‘You know. They’ve made me Treasurer. It’s an honour.’

  ‘Aren’t we equal before God?’

  Harold sighed. ‘Must you find fault with everything I do?’

  ‘It’s not that. I just don’t like everyone being able to see me, that’s all.’

  ‘I confess, Ellen, it is a source of pride to me that they do see you.’

  Ellen shut her eyes.

&nb
sp; The chapel was full, for a circuit preacher of some notoriety was due to speak. He took as his subject the Lord’s undying forgiveness, but a forgiveness that was both merciful and uncompromising. He looked like quite an ordinary man, perhaps a book-keeper or a bank clerk, with his fussy little moustache and neatly side-parted hair. He wore a dark suit, shiny with ten years’ use, a plain woollen tie, and a wing collar that would not sit symmetrically. But in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, Mr Ellis was a gifted orator, with a voice that rolled over them and carried his audience as though on a wave.

  ‘And John tells us that “the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery” – taken how, brothers and sisters? We must imagine this wretched sinner dragged naked into the public square! “They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.” Did they seek her, knowing what they should find? Did she sin beneath the sky, like the beasts of the fields? And what did the author of her shame do? Run from her, abandoning her to her fate? For the Pharisees knew the law of Moses, that such as she should be stoned to death – and her partner in sin, though he had fled to leave her to face her merciless judges alone.’

  Tom sat on Ellen’s left, his thoughts far from the sermon, out on a field in Harbledown with a kite. Little David leaned into her right; by the weight of him she knew he would soon be asleep. David’s father sat the other side of his son, but now he reached a large soft hand across the boy and patted Ellen’s clenched hands. She felt his gaze on her, but refused to look his way. She wanted to cry out against him for his kindness, for she revolted against him with every cell of her body.

  *

  Later, standing behind the tea-urn, Ellen hated herself for the impatience she felt with these people dressed in their creaking Sunday best, their hair smoothed down with soap and water to make immobile caps round their heads, their collars starched and their clothing smelling of camphor and fusty presses. But as always, she made the effort to smile, telling herself that this was the high point of their week and she had no right to despise them for it, though if she could have done she would have walked swiftly out of the hall and into the open air, to walk until the houses petered out amongst the fields, to muddy her good shoes above Harbledown, to strike out towards Whitstable, or simply to sink into the woods at Blean. Who knew what she might stumble upon there if she looked long enough.

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Chown?’

  Ellen looked sideways at Miss Sole, who’d paused in her self-appointed work of laying out the cups and saucers in neat rows. There was concern in the little puckered face, but curiosity also in her glossy black eyes.

  ‘Yes, indeed, I am very well. Just a little distracted, you know, thinking about what the boys have been up to,’ she gabbled.

  ‘Oh, it’s just when you laughed like that . . .’

  ‘What a splendid job you’ve made of those crocks, Miss Sole. Makes my task so much easier.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear. Whatever little I may do, you know . . .’

  Ellen continued to mechanically slip milk into the empty cups and to follow up with the dark orange brew of tea, murmuring her acknowledgement of the polite thanks of the people who queued up for it. No one else but Miss Sole had apparently heard her unconscious laughter, for the conversation in the room was animated and noisy. So Ellen sensed rather than heard that she was being discussed. A momentary lull in the dignified press against the tea table gave her an uninterrupted view across the room to where Harold was talking with the visiting preacher. Her husband was flushed, proud and unusually lively, his hand frequently touching the other man’s arm for emphasis, or to prevent him from leaving. But something in what he said had grasped the preacher’s attention. His head inclined closer to Harold’s, and a moment later he turned and looked straight at Ellen with some interest – and then looked her swiftly up and down, taking in as much as he could of what was not obscured by the table and the tea-urn.

  ‘Miss Sole, would you mind taking over for a moment?’ said Ellen. ‘I think I need some air.’

  ‘Oh, but I’d better come with you. Let me just get Enid to help—’

  ‘No – please – I shall be quite all right. Judith is sure to be outside.’

  Judith was. She leaned sulkily against a shop window a few yards down, smoking a rebellious cigarette.

  ‘Blimey, Ellen, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Sam wasn’t in there, was he?’

  ‘Oh Judith, your name is tact! No, of course he wasn’t. But Harold is, and he’s telling that preacher all about me!’

  Judith dropped her cigarette and ground it out without looking.

  ‘Go on! As if he’d dare!’

  ‘I’m sure of it. He couldn’t resist it, not after that sermon. All that bit about the man leaving the adulteress to face the music alone—’

  ‘Sam hasn’t, though. He said he’d be back.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ exclaimed Ellen, on the verge of tears with anger and humiliation. ‘I can barely think about Sam now, for being so angry with Harold. That man stared at me, Judith, and there was no man-of-God in his look either. I wonder how long it’s going to be before he finds he’s got to tell other people of my misfortunes just so he can show them how God moves his wonders to perform! Judy, would you go in and get the boys from the playroom and let’s go home? Promise them anything to make them come quickly – I’ll take them to see the cattle auction Saturday morning, they always like that.’

  ‘What’ll I say to Pa?’

  ‘I don’t care what you say to him but I won’t go back in there.’

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘Have you got the old gipsy blood in your veins?’ I asked the other day of a gang I met on their way to Quenington feast. ‘Always gipsies, ever since we can remember,’ was the reply. ‘Fathers, grandfathers were just the same – always living in the open air, winter and summer, and always moving about with the vans.’

  Joseph Arthur Gibbs, A Cotswold Village

  Outcast

  Medway

  In a hastily erected tent in a copse near Maidstone, Sam crouched beside his mother.

  ‘So’s mandy to ker, daiya, to ker tutti feder? ’26

  ‘It is my Duvel’s kerrimus, and we can’t ker kantch.27 I s’ll stay here now, boy. No, I’ll not go in the wagon. I was born in a bender and I’ll die in one. Now, all I’ll want here is a bit of carpet to lie on, and my best togs. Don’t worry about my shoes – they’ll be good for someone after. You go get my bits and pieces, and then when I’m ready sit with me. There are things I want to say to you. Don’t let the others near me. And don’t forget a candle for my head.’

  *

  ‘My pipe.’

  ‘Here, Mother. I’ll light it for you.’

  ‘You won’t! I’m not dead yet! I shall want it by me – something your father made to take with me. Baccy always tasted better to me in wood, not clay. Tell Jenner to put it in my right hand. He was good with his hands, your father, better’n he was with the horses. You’ve got that gift from my side.’

  ‘How do you know it’s now, Mother?’

  ‘How do I know I’m going? I know. The money is here for the laying out of me,’ and coins chinked in a pocket. ‘Go to Otham with it, and go to Jenner’s cottage. He’ll be expecting you, though he didn’t believe it when I tole him. I gev his lady something for the rheumaticks. And ask him to see the sexton for a place for me, as close to the hedge as can be managed. Then I want you to promise me something. Come closer . . .’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want any of ’em Bucklands hearin’. I should’ve said this long since, best child of mine. I could never have said it when your father lived. I think you mun go, Sam,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘Go? ’

  ‘Ssh! You’re all I’ve left since my Miselda took off. I don’t know where she is nor how she does, but I think of her every day and hope she’s happy. I’ll die and my own daughter not know she was all this time in my heart. And your biti tickner th
e gauji girl have gev you – I’ll not see his face either but in my dreams.’

  ‘He’s handsome, Mother, handsome and brave.’

  ‘And I’ve seen you thinking of him and his mother all this time. My own child, the only one I have left, the saddest man on earth! This life ain’t going to last as it is – them cars and tractors and whatnot will push us off the roads, I can see it. But it’s me that has kept you from her. You could have gone straight back there when you was better. Then them lot put you in the gaol, and who is to know they won’t do it again? What is there for you here? Promise me you’ll go, for I want to go to my rest knowing I don’t leave you with them as don’t love you. Lukey and them others made you pay hard enough for what you done, in front of me, so there’ll be nothing will stop them doing whatever they want when I’m mulo28 . . . Don’t look at me that way, Sam. I’m only sorry to leave Lukey the vardo your father gev you, but it can’t be helped, and you mustn’t be there when they yag29 it. Take your cup and plate, and then when she finds they’re gone, she’ll know and you won’t have to tell ’er anything. I never thought I’d say this, Sam, but I don’t see another way.’

  ‘You want me to leave the road, Mother?’

  ‘I’ve wanted that ever since they ladged30 you.’

  ‘They’d say I ladged Lukey, Mother, and they’d be right.’

  ‘Maybe so, but it’s her pride you hurt, not her love. That one don’t love you nor has for a long while. But the biti gauji rakli does, and has your child, and that’s good enough for me for I’m your mother afore I’m anything else.’

  ‘She has a husband, Mother! And a little boy with him.’

  ‘She might do, but he’s older’n her, ain’t he? That’s what I see, anyroad. ’Twas you that made her bleed, weren’t it? She be yours, Sam. And her other biti boy, you make sure you treat ’en right. He’s your boy’s brother and a son is always more his mother’s than his father’s, this I know. Now are you going to promise me, Sam, so’s I can go content?’