The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  The second night was better, in a barn near Lenham Heath, but he and Fred had needed to work to make it habitable: the farm buildings were overrun with rats.

  Sam busied himself, to the mystification of the farmer, in making rudimentary traps with old treacle cans and rags of stockings from a pile of flotsam awaiting the rag and bone man. He blocked as many rat-holes as he could find so that their occupants had to leave by those that ended in the can and stocking traps, whereupon they were fired on with a catapult. Fred finished off those that managed to escape the traps.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ said the farmer in admiration.

  ‘It’d have been much faster if I’d had my ferrets,’ said Sam.

  ‘You come back this way next year or whenever you want, with your ferrets, and you’ll always have work here.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but I’m expected for a permanent place at Patrixbourne,’ Sam lied.

  ‘Well, if that don’t work, you make your way back here,’ said the farmer, and stumped off to dig a hole to throw the corpses in.

  But Sam’s employer laid down another condition to fulfil before he would be paid. Sam had some intimation of what was coming when he was offered lemonade with his supper, rather than the customary ale. But he had been asked to eat that supper at the farmer’s table, with his taciturn wife, two teenage sons, a younger daughter, and a gnarled and bent farmhand of about seventy, who looked on Sam with some suspicion until he understood that he was only passing through. Natural courtesy made Sam wait before reaching for his food, so that his hosts might start first.

  ‘Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to thy service, and keep us ever mindful of the needs of others. In the name of Jesus our Lord, Amen,’ intoned Farmer Piper.

  The two boys were nearly as silent as their mother, but the girl, an awkward fourteen, could not keep her eyes off Sam. Every time he looked in her direction, drawn by her furtive gaze, she would look down at her plate.

  It’s that earring she’s staring at, I’ll bet. Probably she’s not let to wear any geegaws herself, poor maidy.

  On the dresser behind the farmer’s wife Sam could see two framed studio portraits of unsmiling men in uniform, propped amongst the willow pattern plates. The farmer noticed his glance, and said quietly, ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘Have you a family yourself, Mr Boswell?’

  ‘No . . . not now. I’ve just buried my mother. So it’s just me . . . and the dog.’

  The woman glanced at her husband then, as if asking permission. ‘I’ll make you a bed up in the house. You’d be more comfortable.’

  ‘Ah, no, thank you all the same. I’d not want to put you to that trouble, and if the truth be known, I’m used to sleeping out of doors, so to speak, so the barn will suit me fine.’ It was not that sheets and pillows did not appeal – they did, for straw is noisy to lie on – but to be enclosed within four walls was too like the prison cell. Yet Sam knew that sooner or later this too was something he would have to adjust to.

  After the meal the woman gave him some horse blankets and the farmer said goodnight.

  ‘Tomorrow is the Lord’s day. We would be glad if you would give Him thanks for this day’s work by accompanying us to our chapel tomorrow. There is a preacher from Canterbury coming out special for us and we should make him welcome. Will you join us, Mr Boswell?’

  He hesitated. It would be churlish not to.

  ‘It is just that . . . I cannot read that well, sir. I won’t know the words of the hymns you sing. And I have only the clothes you see me in now.’

  ‘I wonder how many of our Lord’s disciples could read. It is enough that you can hear His word. Mary has some clothes that belonged to my late brother who was more of a size with you than with me. You can wear them and then we can parcel them up for you.’

  ‘Thank you for your kindness, sir,’ said Sam. ‘Of course I’ll come tomorrow. If I could just borrow a mirror in the morning to shave in?’

  ‘I shall lend it you tonight, Mr Boswell, if you don’t mind, straight after I have used it myself. It’s better not to perform such tasks on the Sabbath. Whilst I have my shave, Mary will get the clothes to see if they fit you.’

  They did, more or less, though they would have benefited from another inch on the sleeve and one less round the waist, but they came with braces so he didn’t need to use his customary length of twine. Sam especially liked the crisp starched feel of the shirt, but was flummoxed by the tie.

  ‘I shall have to ask you for help with this tomorrow, sir,’ he said humbly. ‘I have never worn one.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the farmer. ‘Mary will get you fresh water to shave in, and if you put the mirror here and turn up the oil lamp, you’ll see what you’re about. I daresay you know your own face well enough. You might want this too,’ he said, rummaging in a drawer of the dresser and pulling out a battered steel comb. ‘You can keep it – I’ve another.’

  Sam wondered if it had also been the brother’s, or had belonged to one of the boys in uniform.

  ‘You’ve been very generous to a stranger, sir.’

  ‘I do only my duty. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” ’

  ‘I am no angel, I’m afraid, though I think no devil either.’

  ‘Devil no, for you are created in His image and so I pray you may be saved. Goodnight, Mr Boswell.’

  *

  Sam shaved carefully in the now silent kitchen. He was about to turn down the oil lamp when he looked again at his tired, lean face in the mirror and decided on one more step to gaujodom. He worked the thin gold hoop round in his ear lobe until he could locate the join.

  Ow! No need to rush, Sam. He had forgotten to turn it since his mother died, and he felt the pull on his flesh. Then carefully he prised the thin loop apart, and eased it out. He looked at it lying forlornly in his palm, then back at his face in the mirror. With some grimacing he pulled the comb through his unruly hair, aiming for a parting like the one the farmer himself had. You’ll need to find a barber in Canterbury, he told himself, remembering that the last time he had put his head beneath another man’s hands had been in Winchester. Since then Lukey had inexpertly scissored away when he’d asked. His hair thus partly tamed, and his ears naked, he didn’t immediately recognise himself.

  ‘Make the best of it, gaujo,’ he muttered, ‘there’s no turning back now.’ His past years, his whole life, seemed weirdly to telescope. The earring had been removed twice before, the first time when he was in Lincoln. Within a few weeks the hole in his lobe had closed up, leaving barely an indent. When he had been demobbed and returned to his old life, his mother had taken him into the vardo alone and bored through the lobe again with a needle passed through a candle, and he had gritted his teeth with the pain, so that neither Lukey nor her brothers might hear him cry out. Nor had it been easier when he had left Winchester and had to repeat the process.

  Shall I give it to the rakli? he wondered. The little maidy spent long enough gazing at it – but I don’t think her father would like it. No, gold is gold. I’ll take it to the pawn in Canterbury and that’ll be the end of it.

  Curled in the straw beside Fred, Sam slept better than he had for months, exhausted by his long tramp, lack of sleep in the shepherd’s hut the night before, and the tearing about killing rats. But most of all the sense of desolation he had felt when he set out on his journey was lifting. He would be able to keep himself – and maybe more than that – and he was halfway to Canterbury.

  *

  Ellen feigned sleep as Harold undressed. He always removed his garments in exactly the same order. She heard the swish of his tie being pulled undone, the quick, repetitive movement as he rolled it round his fingers and then dropped it into the top left-hand drawer of the dresser, the rattle of his collar studs in their wooden box, followed by his cuff-links in theirs, the unclipping of
his braces, the folding and hanging of shirt and trousers, the shoes lined up with military precision in the foot of the wardrobe, his pyjama jacket buttoned – on coming to Canterbury he had abandoned his old-fashioned nightshirts – and their trousers tied before his sock garters came off and the socks were balled up. Ellen did not know what her husband looked like without his clothes but could have described all these sounds minutely. She dug her nails into her palms as she listened. Millie’s bed creaked as Harold sat down. Ellen shifted, turning her back.

  ‘I have to be up early – on the circuit. Barton’s lending me his trap.’

  Ellen made a small sound, as though disturbed in her sleep.

  ‘I know you’re not asleep.’

  ‘What was that, Harold?’

  ‘I’ll turn out the light, then.’

  He lay on his back silently for a few minutes. She could tell from his breathing what was coming next. She saw herself scrambling out of her side of the bed and running downstairs, to lock herself in the outside privy. He reached for her, taking her shoulder and easing her onto her back. She felt a scream rising in her throat. It was Saturday, a fortnight had gone by since the last time, and Harold was as predictable in his approach to sex as he was to undressing.

  ‘No,’ she heard herself say. ‘I can’t.’

  He withdrew his hands as though she burned him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he eventually asked. ‘Have you your . . . monthlies? No, you can’t have . . . so why?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, Harold. I’m sorry.’ Because doing this with you would betray the man I love.

  ‘I’m not a brute, Ellen. I shan’t force you.’

  Wordlessly, both turned their backs. An hour later Harold spoke into the silence.

  ‘You have always taken me on sufferance, Ellen. I shall try not to importune you again.’

  *

  The family looked approvingly at Sam when he appeared at breakfast. He had risen early and stripped to the waist before washing himself at the pump, his body tingling at the shock of icy water on his skin on a misty November morning. He wondered if already he was being softened by the prospect of a journey’s end, by food provided at a farmhouse table that he had not had to trap, shoot, or beg himself. It was as though his imperviousness to the elements was leaking out of him through the tiny puncture left by the earring. He found himself more than once with his fingers to his ear, feeling that what had been part of him was missing. It felt odder this time, because he had chosen to take the hoop out himself.

  Sam smiled back at the farmer’s family, taking his cue from the way they reached for the bread baked the evening before, how much of the pale creamy butter they spread on it, how quickly they drank down the generous mugs of tea. Fasting didn’t figure in these people’s lives, evidently; simple, plentiful food and kindness to strangers, however, did. The farmer’s daughter had got over her curiosity of the night before – either that, or one or other of her parents had taken her aside and told her off for rudeness. Sam hoped not the latter. All she had to look at today was a worn, thin agricultural labourer who felt old beyond his years, dressed decently and warmly for Sunday observance. Or was it that his clothes hadn’t belonged to her uncle but to one of her brothers and she couldn’t bear to look at them?

  *

  The farmer walked with Sam just ahead of his wife and children.

  ‘If you like, Mr Boswell, you can sit at the back of the chapel, so’s you don’t feel you stand out, like. You’ll still hear all that’s going on, for today’s preacher has a fine, clear voice, without deafening anybody. My Jemmy has said he’ll sit with you. There is quite a bit of singing and that, and as you said, you’ll not know the words, but I wouldn’t let it worry you. The chapel folk sing as a way to pray, so they won’t be looking to see if you’re praying too.

  ‘There’s a bag comes round, not a plate, so whatever you put in will be up to you. We don’t judge a man by the size of his offering, for did not the poor widow’s mite please our Lord more than all the abundance of the rich man?’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ said Sam politely, remembering one of the sermons at Winchester.

  ‘Sometimes the converted will come forward to the penitent form, or them that want to atone for their sins and ask forgiveness. But that depends on the preacher. The ones who preach what I call high, that really pull the soul out of you so’s you’d do anything, they get many to come forward.’

  Sam shivered inwardly. What was this they did? A court where the wrongdoer was tried before all his community? Momentarily distracted, he didn’t immediately follow Piper’s talk, until a name shocked him into full alertness.

  ‘There are times I wonder if they think they’re more successful the more tears they get a body to shed . . . But this Mr Chown, he’s a quieter sort of man entirely. I like when it’s his turn in the district to come out here. He says things very calmly, like, that you think on a lot after. And then you think he must have been saying it directly to you, but that you had to consider it first and weigh it up before you can understand what you must do with it: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face”, as you might say.’

  ‘Your preachers, can they have wives, same as parsons?’ Sam managed to get out.

  ‘Why, of course,’ said the farmer, his eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘We ain’t like them poor Romanists, shut up in a house without so much as a cat for company, if not another songless blackbird like themselves, when. Didn’t the Lord God himself say: “It is not good that the man should be alone”? Mr Chown has a wife, though he’s not been long in these parts so I haven’t met her. He has a young family so no doubt his lady will be taking them to the chapel in Canterbury instead. His first wife died, they say, years ago, and in another part of the country. But he bore her loss for many years and the Lord saw his suffering and provided him with another helpmate – a widow lady herself. So they have each other to love and comfort now.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man, then,’ said Sam bleakly.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose he is!’ The farmer looked sideways at his guest, and wondered what unhappiness of his own made him speak in those tones, but he didn’t dream of prying.

  ‘I’ve had a thought,’ said the farmer. ‘If Mr Chown hasn’t come with a full load, you could go back on the trap with him to Canterbury.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to trouble the gentleman.’

  ‘What trouble would it be? “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.” You leave it to me. If I’m honest, I’m already sorry to lose you, but if things don’t work out with your Farmer French at Patrixbourne, I could use another pair of hands here – all those turnips to pull in the long field, for one. Old Ted is more rheumaticky by the day, and I’ll give him whatever he can manage to do for as long as he’s able, for I won’t have him in the workhouse if it can be helped. That’s where he was born and he deserves better than to go back there. You’re young, but not too young, and strong, and you’ve a nice, polite way with you . . . I’ll be honest with you, Mr Boswell, I haven’t always had such a good experience of your kind – I mean, there’s been good ’uns and bad ’uns . . .’

  ‘They’re not my kind, Mr Piper, good or bad. I don’t belong with them now.’

  ‘Well, I wish you well whatever you’re a going to do now. And the offer is open. Only –’ and here he smiled, to take the edge off what he was about to say – ‘don’t think of casting your eyes on my Esther! I saw last night as she couldn’t keep hers off of you!’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it!’ exclaimed Sam, in genuine alarm.

  ‘Yes, well she’s not such a bad-looking girl as all that, is she?’ said Piper, nettled.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that! She’s a fine girl and will turn into a finer woman. I mean one like her could do a lot better than a fellow like me who has nothing to call his own but what others are kind enough to give him!’

  ‘You’ve your hands, Mr Boswell, and the willingness to use t
hem well. Those are riches,’ replied the farmer, mollified. ‘We’re here now. Jemmy! You go in with Mr Boswell, like I said, and you’ve permission to sit in the back. I’m going up near the rostrum.’

  At the junction of three roads stood the little brick chapel. Sam pulled off his hat, and crushed it in his hands. He was fond of it, but knew it looked outlandish with the respectable countryman’s suit and tie that he wore now. He wanted to make himself as inconspicuous as he could, for he was shaken by Piper’s news that Ellen’s husband was to be the preacher, and if there had been a way of avoiding the farmer’s kindness in organising this lift to Canterbury, he would have taken it. What if Chown invited him back home? He could hardly make the excuse of getting over to Farmer French’s early, when his supposed employer had been expecting him later, and on foot. He would have to think of something. It was a cold day, but Sam sweated inside his new clothes. This collar was surely too tight, the tie a noose . . .

  *

  Sam had never seen a place so plain and stripped, yet called itself a church. Here there was no stained glass, nor any candlesticks. There was no altar, just a pulpit made by a village carpenter, the steps up to which made Sam think of a gallows. And here, arranging his notes, was the middle-aged man who laid his soft, pale, God-fearing flesh next to Ellen’s every night, and who fed and clothed her dark-haired child.

  I wonder does my boy call him father?

  Sam began by studying Chown, who looked older and more care-worn than the man he had glimpsed through the trees that day when jealousy sank its teeth into his heart. But gradually he became absorbed by what he had to say.