The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘So bury me, burn everything of mine whilst you’re still a travellin’ man, say a prayer for me from time to time and remember me often – and go to her.’

  *

  Sam lay awake most of that last night in his customary place on the far side of the bed, carefully not touching his wife, watching the familiar things in the wagon take shape in the pale dawn. The bedding that had wrapped his mother on the bunk below had been taken out and burned along with her remaining clothes in the bender tent in which she had died. Her crockery he had smashed himself, and twisted her cutlery out of any recognisable shape, and then he had buried the lot behind the wagon. He had cried over that little funeral more than at the graveside. He looked at the curve of Lucretia’s mouth as she slept, as if assessing a stranger, and felt pity move in him like a physical pain, pity he knew she would dispel the moment she opened her eyes and mouth. Did I love you, Lukey? he wondered. Would love have stayed with us if a biti tickner had’ve come too? And then he thought of Ellen.

  Sam feigned sleep, as he always did, as soon as he heard an alertness in Lucretia’s breathing that meant she was close to waking. This was not idleness on his part; a Gypsy wife was expected to go to bed after her husband, and to rise before him. If he had done otherwise she would have taken it as a personal affront.

  He opened his eyes as she stepped down from the wagon. Over and over during the night he had listed in his head what few items he would need to take with him and now he looked round the interior checking everything was where he expected it to be, thinking about the order in which he planned to gather them up. Though no longer illiterate, Sam had retained the sharp visual memory of the intelligent man who has never learned to read and write. Hearing Lucretia clanging the kettle on the crane over the fire, and cursing as she tried to coax the embers into life, he moved swiftly to gather his plate and cup, knife and fork, his shaving things.

  Lucretia didn’t turn round as he climbed down the steps so she didn’t see that he carried a small sack over his shoulder, the same one he had carried out of the prison. He considered speaking to her, but didn’t want to rouse her suspicions, so walked off into the trees as nonchalantly as he could, as if this was a morning like any other, and he was going to relieve himself. He had to force himself not to look round the encampment or to acknowledge the other wives emerging from their wagons or the children from the bender tents. The children – oh I’ll miss them! The only beings to whom he had whispered his goodbyes had been the animals: the patient drayhorses and Fred, the elderly lurcher who slept beneath his wagon. He would see none of this ever again, and if he encountered any of these people who had been his family, the best he could hope for is that they would look through him as though he were not there, for he would never be able to mix with other Gypsies again, and the fact that he had chosen that path did not make it any easier. He walked on in the direction of the road that would lead back to Canterbury, but this time he would walk all twenty-seven miles of it.

  Oh, I should’ve taken the dog! He knew Lucretia disliked it and would think nothing of telling Liberty to get rid of it. But he marched on, at a swinging pace, through a film of tears. Sam hadn’t considered yet how others, not only a mere dog, might suffer as a result of his flight. He couldn’t think that far yet. His horizon was bounded by Farmer French’s fields, and his need of willing hands to lift the turnips and swedes, and the mangolds that would feed the cattle in the cold months.

  ‘You’re a chorredi gaujo31 now, Sam Loveridge,’ he said to himself, wondering when he would get used to the greatest insult a Gypsy could suffer. He kept his back turned on his world and went on.

  *

  ‘How could you, Harold? How could you humiliate me like that?’

  He had never seen Ellen like this. He had believed he had married a girl who was docile, submissive and, finally it occurred to him, broken, her young romantic dreams shattered, first by death and then by the Gypsy’s desertion. Now that same woman shook with vexation. He recognised in her something of Oliver in his most exalted moments, those times when his voice carried clear from the rostrum whilst his congregation shouted and sobbed. Her slender figure seemed to fill the little front room. She didn’t shriek, as he had observed with distaste that angry women – or drunken ones – often did. The force of her voice was lower in register than usual – it was an older voice, he thought. Nevertheless he muttered, ‘Could you keep your voice down – the neighbours . . .’

  ‘I. Do. Not. Care! Why should I? You didn’t give a damn—’

  ‘Language, Ellen! A woman should never foul her mouth!’

  ‘Oh, shut up! You didn’t give a damn about what I thought when you told that preacher everything! You are a hypocrite, Harold Chown! “For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corner of the streets, that they may be seen of men.” That’s what you are, Harold, a Pharisee!’

  ‘I am sure Mr Ellis will be the soul of discretion, Ellen . . . All I wanted to do was to compliment him on the strength of his preaching – that scripture speaks to us whatever the day, whatever the season—’

  ‘How dare you! How dare you justify yourself to me! Do you really think your precious Mr Ellis will keep that story to himself? No, no, no! He’ll tell it every time he speaks of that scripture. My troubles, my poor Tom, will get them all listening and witnessing to God’s glory, but oh, won’t the husband be quite the Christian! I should never have married you, Chown. I should have waited for Sam to come for me!’

  ‘He never did, Ellen! He left you to face your accusers!’

  ‘That’s what you think! ’

  Harold paled. ‘You’ve seen him?’ he whispered. He felt as though the floorboards shifted beneath his feet, and caught at the mantelpiece for support. Ellen stared at him, stony-faced.

  ‘Where is he, Ellen?’

  Silence.

  ‘Ellen, you must tell me.’

  At last she sagged, the fight gone out of her.

  ‘I don’t know. I have no idea where he is.’

  Harold put his hands to his forehead in relief. It’s just bluster, then, that’s all! Hearing what he wanted to hear, he didn’t then realise that she had not answered his first question.

  ‘Why do you hold a candle for him still, even though he abandoned you, Ellen? Every inch that Tom grows puts more distance between him and you – more distance in his mind too. Can you not find some way to love me instead, even a little?’

  ‘I think you’re a good man,’ she said quietly.

  ‘A good man! Oh, what an epitaph!’ he said. ‘I am going to go out for a while. I want to walk and pray, and seek guidance. Then I will come home and I will beg your forgiveness for having asked too much of you.’

  He took his coat and hat from behind the door and stepped directly out of the room into the street. He walked away briskly, head bowed, in the direction of the tannery and the fields beyond. He didn’t see the twitch of his next-door neighbour’s curtains.

  Judy came through from the scullery, where she had stood silently throughout the argument. She’d shooed the boys out to play in the yard (‘Poor little beggars have had enough God for one day, even if it is Sunday!’) when Harold had come through the back door asking, ‘Where were you all?’ and walked into the storm.

  ‘Lor, Ellen, that was close!’ As Judith held her, Ellen let out the tears she hadn’t wanted Harold to witness.

  ‘It’s true, though, I don’t know where he is, Judy!’

  ‘You told me he said he’d be back. He wouldn’t have jumped down off that wagon and come running after you in front of all those people if he didn’t want you, Ellen. I’d trust him if I were you.’

  ‘But what should I do if he does come back?’

  ‘I know what I’d do. Sit down now, girl, and I’ll get you a cup of tea. I don’t suppose you got one for yourself you were that busy serving those old tabbies.’

  Ellen sank down into a chair, wondering what would happe
n next.

  *

  The following morning they took breakfast in strained silence, after Harold had spoken a hurried grace that the children joined in with but the women ignored. Tom looked questioningly from his mother to Judith, whilst his younger brother, oblivious to the atmosphere, drove a finger of toast round the edge of his plate where glazed lines made for him an imaginary railway line. The spout of the teapot chinked loudly against Harold’s cup.

  ‘Any letters, Ellen?’

  ‘Just Mother. I shall read it later,’ she answered, feigning indifference, squeezing her left hand into a fist beneath the table.

  *

  I hope you can forgive me. I thought I was acting for the best, her mother wrote. There was another, but Oliver burned it. I have something else to tell you if I can find the courage, so next time I see you my dear girl. I haven’t read it I promise.

  Ellen merely skimmed this letter, sniffing instead the crumpled envelope it enclosed. Tears came to her eyes; it smelled of her mother’s lavender bags. Had she been too hard on her? No, the postmark was more than two years old. She opened it with shaking fingers. My God, it’s from a prison! She read the round, childish handwriting, and Sam Loveridge stood pleadingly before her.

  . . . so now you no I did not abandon you but I am feard that you have fergotten me. I have nothing to do here but think about you and that I have lorst you. I go round in circles like in the exsercize yard all in my head at night and curse myself for a weak fool who did not fite for you. I am feard now to leave this place becos when I come for you maybe you will shut the door in my face thow I will die like a rat in a trap if I stay here longer with no grass to walk on nor no more than a hangkerchif of sky to look at. I love you Ellen. I always will. I am your servant.

  Sampson Loveridge.

  There were faint pencil marks on the page; Ellen looked more closely and saw that his spelling mistakes and punctuation had been neatly corrected in a smaller hand. She wondered if he had not had enough paper to make a fair copy, or had otherwise been prevented from doing so. With those marks, the letter looked like Sunday school homework; the corrections could have been her own.

  Ellen carried the letter upstairs, and opening a drawer in her dressing table, reached in and took out a package awkwardly wrapped in brown paper. Inside lay a stoneware beer bottle, and folded within tissue paper, a tattered man’s neckerchief, which she lifted out and kissed. Then with reverent care she placed the envelope with these and tied up the parcel again. Oh Sam, come back, come back!

  The bedroom door edged open, and Tom peered round it, followed by David.

  ‘Don’t cry, Ma!’ said Tom. She put her arms out to her sons, resting her burning face against one boy’s cheek and then against the other’s. David began to cry without knowing why.

  *

  ‘Where’s that useless dinilo got to?’ muttered Lucretia.

  ‘More full o’ shit than ever!’ laughed Caley. ‘All the tea will be drunk if he don’t get back here soon!’

  Lucretia had a presentiment that something was different, that Sam wasn’t just late at the campfire, but that his presence in the clearing had somehow been cancelled out. She got up, went into the wagon and bent over to open the low cupboard nearest the door. Her hand went in but didn’t encounter the items that had been there for as long as she had lived in this vardo; it froze in the empty space. She remained bent over, deciding what face she would present to the tea-drinkers a few feet away.

  Eventually she stood up and called out, ‘You drink his bleddy tea, brother!’ But all she needed to say when she joined them by the fire was, ‘I’ll get his togs. They’re for burning.’

  She brought them out later, but not before pressing her face into them one last time.

  *

  ‘How could they have been so cruel, Judy?’

  ‘Don’t blame your mother – the poor soul is afraid of her own hiccups. She sent you it, didn’t she? She could have pretended there’d never been a letter.’

  ‘She couldn’t. I’d’ve got it out of her next time I saw her. She couldn’t lie to save her life. It’s him – Grandfer. Judging a man he’s never met. And doing that to me – I thought he loved me!’

  ‘Ellen, do you think Pa knew?’

  ‘That they were in it together? Oh Lord, what if they were?’

  *

  Sam calculated that Canterbury was nine or ten hours’ walk away, but he didn’t want to go there by the most direct road. I don’t think them Bucklands will come after me, but if they do, I’m not going to make it easy for them. True, he would hear a man on horseback more readily on the main road than in a country lane, but even here he’d have enough warning, his senses attuned by a lifetime outdoors to the slightest sound or vibration of the ground beneath his feet. And to his infinite thankfulness, he was now not making the journey alone. By the time he’d turned onto the village green at Bearsted, pausing to consider which of the pubs might serve a Gypsy, at least at the back door, he’d heard a scuffling and a whining behind him.

  ‘Oh Fred, Fred, you followed me, old fellow!’ He squatted down and held the dog close enough to smell the sweet mustiness of his pelt. The animal was unused to such an obvious sign of affection and overjoyed at having found his master, so pressed home his advantage by nuzzling Sam’s face. Sam automatically stopped him, for no matter how much he loved the dog, he knew that as a dog, he was mochadi, impure. I ain’t so clean myself, he thought, and looking round first to see if there was anyone who might object, he washed his face and hands at the village pump, shivering in the cold air. He told himself it wasn’t to wash off Fred, but because he had not gone to the stream that morning and was dusty from the road.

  A woman of about thirty, aproned, with her sleeves rolled up, emerged from the door of the White Horse and stood watching him, hands on hips.

  You’re in their world now, he thought. Can’t put it off any longer. He shook the drops from his hands and walked towards her.

  ‘Good morning, lady.’

  ‘Morning. What might you be wanting here?’

  ‘A glass of ale, if you’d be so kind.’

  She looked at him in silence as he braced himself for a refusal. Then Fred gently padded over and sat on his haunches, looking up at her. At last she smiled.

  ‘Your dog looks hungry. Come round the back, the two of you,’ and she turned and went back into the pub.

  ‘Bless you, Fred!’ whispered Sam. He walked behind the pub and stood at the back door, waiting to see if he’d be invited in.

  ‘Come in, then, you look clean enough,’ she called out. ‘Stay in the back bar – the men’ll come in by the front for their dinner soon.’

  She put a pint glass in front of him, and held out her hand for payment.

  ‘I’ve some offal if the dog wants it.’

  ‘Thank you kindly.’

  ‘Where are the rest of you then? How long will you all be staying?’

  ‘There’s no one else, lady, just me and him.’

  ‘Go on, you Gypsies always travel together.’

  ‘Then I can’t be a Gypsy, can I?’

  She frowned, and said: ‘You’ve had some bother, I suppose.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘So where are you bound for?’

  ‘Canterbury – but I thought I’d go in the Ashford direction first, see if I can’t find some work there.’

  ‘Funny way to get to Canterbury. Throw ’em off the scent – is that the idea?’

  Sam laughed. He wanted to say, ‘Spoken like a Gypsy’, but didn’t want to push his luck.

  ‘That’s about the size of it!’

  ‘The law after you?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Family trouble, you might say.’

  ‘I’ll give you some bread and cheese, if you like. So you can keep him company when he’s eating them lights.’

  Sam sat quietly, considering what the road might immediately bring if he sidled up to Canterbury from the south-east. That way if Luk
ey’s brothers did pursue him, they were a lot less likely to find him. He was almost certain the Bucklands had never really swallowed his excuse for jumping down from the vardo the day of the fair, saying he’d wanted to avoid someone he owed money to. He was sure, too, the unwillingness with which he took part in the preparations for leaving the city and heading west had been noticed. Lukey had twice urged him to get a move on. There were other considerations too. Sam didn’t want to meet other Gypsies. He’d encountered a pattrin before Bearsted, but as he had expected at that time of year, it indicated west. Nor did he want the gavengros to take him up for vagrancy, which they might too readily do were he on a wider road. If he ran into a rural constable he had decided to say he was Tom Boswell; he didn’t want any conscientious policeman linking him to the Sam Loveridge who had done time for horse-stealing. He rummaged in his pockets; he’d been able to pay for his ale but there wasn’t much left.

  ‘Do you need any help with anything, lady?’

  ‘I thought you said you was moving on,’ she called back.

  Stung, he said, ‘I am. I meant for giving Fred and me our dinner.’

  ‘You could bring up another barrel. My husband’s supposed to have done it, but he’s still upstairs. Recovering from the barrel he put away last night, you might say.’

  *

  The decision to take a meandering route was to be far-reaching in its effect, not least because it brought Sam back to Canterbury far more quickly than he had anticipated.

  Two days later, on Saturday afternoon, Sam approached a farmhouse in search of work. He calculated that he had walked about half the distance he had to cover, and had spent the first of what he thought of as his ‘gauje-nights’ in a corrugated-iron wheeled shepherd’s hut where rain kept him awake, but Fred kept him warm on a heap of straw and sacking. Now Sam had some money, for that farmer had needed some hedging done, and wanted him to stay the next day for a few hours’ more work. Fred had needed some persuasion to get inside the hut, for it evidently looked to him, as it did to Sam, like a small vardo, and so the dog had rustled about underneath it looking for somewhere to lie down, as he had done his entire life. No animal was ever allowed in a vardo; even the caged songbirds hung outside.