The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  ‘Got all his own hair still?’

  ‘He’s going a little thin on the crown, but yes. He uses a bit of pomade but just to keep it tidy. He parts it about here . . .’

  ‘Eyes?’

  ‘Hazel.’

  ‘And how would you describe his build?’

  ‘Oh dear . . . middling again. He stoops slightly, on account of his work and . . . perhaps because he doesn’t like people to notice him too much. He’s got a bit of weight round the middle.’

  ‘Any distinguishing marks?’

  ‘Oh . . . I don’t know, really. I never . . . saw any. He complains about his bunions. His shoes always pinch him.’

  ‘And what about his clothes?’

  ‘He always wears a collar and tie – a dark one, but I can’t remember which one he was wearing today. I’ve never seen him without, even by his own hearth. Plain collar studs always – not silver or mother of pearl or anything like that. The suit he wears for work – it has a very fine stripe in it – a waistcoat, and his father’s watch on a chain. I think it has something engraved inside it. Dark grey braces. He didn’t take his gamp with him; I noticed it by the door when Judith and I went to look for him. Black shoes, oldish ones but with new soles, a homburg hat.’

  ‘Thank you. Is there anything you can add, Miss Chown?’

  Judith shook her head.

  The policeman sighed, and replaced the cap on his fountain pen.

  ‘I’m afraid, ladies, the man they have in the mortuary at Longport more or less answers this description.’

  Ellen shut her eyes, appalled at the relief she felt, and gripped Judith’s hand. It’s not Sam!

  Misunderstanding her, the policeman went on.

  ‘However, we shouldn’t despair just yet. There are probably hundreds of men in Canterbury would fit that description. It’s a possibility that the man you’ll be asked to identify will be a complete stranger.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s at home by now, wondering where we are?’

  ‘We can rule that out. An officer has gone to your house and is being looked after by your Mrs Clerk at this moment. If he is your husband then we shall need to ask you what, if anything, you know about the man he went to meet. But, first things first. There’s a car ready to take you to Longport.’

  *

  The brightness of the light in the white-tiled mortuary hurt Ellen’s eyes and a stench of ammonia made them water. She had never been in anywhere quite so clean. The body lay under a sheet on a marble-topped trestle, but the feet protruded, pale, creased, pathetically helpless – and bunioned. An aproned orderly led her to the head of the trestle. She could smell the pomade he used on his hair and moustache despite the ammonia reek. The orderly took the sheet in both hands and murmured: ‘Are you ready, ma’am?’

  She took in the torn forehead, the jowls slack and pale, the teeth visible through the parted blue lips, but also the delicacy of the skin over his collarbone. She heard Judith sniffling at her shoulder, and thought: Sam, what have you done?

  *

  By the time Canterbury petered out amongst swaggering Victorian mansions, Sam was drenched through. Once the street lamps ended he guided himself by the blur of the moon beyond the heavy clouds and by the grit of the road. By Milestone Farm, where he turned left towards Patrixbourne into the tunnel made by looming hedgerows, his boots were squelching and he began to feel light-headed, wound-up, the desperate circular conversation with Harold repeating itself in his brain. He missed his footing, landing clumsily with one knee in the rivulet bordering the lane; someone had recently scythed back the hedge, and the snapped twigs scratched his face and plucked off his cap. He retrieved it, sopping wet, and went on bare-headed beneath the storm.

  French’s farm loomed up, closed and dark, after what had felt like a journey of four hours, though he had come only five miles, which at his customary swinging pace usually only took him an hour and a half whatever the weather. The rain had at last eased off, and the flagstones of the yard between house and barn glittered in the moonlight. Two indistinct shapes skittered towards him, and first Fred’s shaggy face pushed at his hand, followed by the softer nose of French’s collie Ben. Neither barked: they reserved that for tramps.

  ‘Oh, boys, I’m done in!’ he murmured. Both escorted him silently to his hut, Ben then leaving to go back to the barn. Sam collapsed in exhaustion on his mattress, though Fred butted at his boots, wondering why he didn’t take them off.

  An hour later Fred nosed open the door of the hut and loped across to the porch of the house, lifted his head and howled. Ben trotted over and joined in. French opened up eventually, his sou’wester over his nightshirt. He held an old miner’s lamp, and picked up the shotgun propped up inside the door. His wife hovered behind him.

  ‘Wake Algie,’ said French, referring to his other farmhand.

  Following the dogs, the two men could hear Sam’s muttering before they reached his hut. Pushing the door back, the farmer lifted the lamp above a sweating, putty-hued face.

  ‘You take his legs, Algie, and we’ll get him into the house.’

  Meg French, her long grey plait flicking back and forth, took over. ‘Algie, lay the fire now – we’ll need the warming pan.’

  ‘He can go in my bed,’ said Algie. ‘The other room’ll be too cold.’

  She glanced at him. ‘Good man. Let’s get his boots off and then take ’im upstairs. I’ll sit up.’

  ‘Ellen,’ murmured Sam.

  ‘So he has got a woman,’ said Algie.

  *

  Three days of broth and nettle tea, and sponging with warm water and vinegar (Meg French stifled a cry when she first saw Sam’s scarred back), three days of damp sheets and tossing and yelling, and the fever abated. Finally Sam was able to sit up in bed and thank his nurse with lucid eyes.

  ‘Oh Sam,’ she said. ‘What have you done? There’s two policemen downstairs wanting to talk to you.’

  Matthew French’s exasperated voice carried up the stairs.

  ‘I told your men yesterday he couldn’t do a thing like that. He’d not cause pain to any living thing if he didn’t have to, much less a man – or a woman, for that matter. He’ll bag a rabbit for the pot, of course. And he’ll shoot down a crow rather than let ’im pluck the eyes out of the new lambs. The only creature he hates like poison is the rat. I’ve been talking to him at the door of the barn and seen him shift so’s an old tabby who’s found herself a place on the straw where the sun hits ain’t in shadow.’

  ‘What do they want with me, Mr French?’ said Sam, stepping slowly down into the room. The older of the two policemen got to his feet.

  ‘Sampson Loveridge? Wednesday night Mr Harold Chown was found drowned at Denne’s Mill. His widow says he’d gone to meet you. You’ve to come along of us. The coroner’ll be sitting in the morning.’

  *

  Though it was still daylight, Ellen, Judith and Walter sat in the back room with the curtains closed. Harold’s Bible, bristling with page markers, his inkwell and the paper on which he wrote his sermons were just as he had left them, tidied away into the alcove to the left of the chimney breast. On the table lay the receipt for the telegram Judith had sent to Chingestone that morning. Nobody had remembered to get tea ready, though before too long the boys, driven by hunger, would come downstairs and ask for it, and when Pa would come home, and why could they not play outside?

  Walter had slept on Millie’s settle in the front parlour since that rainy night, telling them that they and the boys could not be left on their own: ‘Too many nosey parkers poking about the place.’

  White-faced, Ellen looked at her hands and said for the sixth time that evening: ‘It must have been an accident – mustn’t it?’

  Instead of answering this time, Judith got up and said, ‘Kettle.’

  Ellen turned a pleading face to Walter. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you did right telling them where to find him – Sam, I mean. If you hadn’t, they’d’ve
found him anyway and thought you was in it together.’

  ‘ “In it together”? Oh, Walter!’

  ‘Ssh. I don’t mean it like that!’ He looked through to the scullery where Judy was crashing the tea things onto a tray. ‘I think,’ he said, without looking at Ellen, ‘if Sam ain’t done anything then he ain’t got nothing to worry about.’

  CHAPTER 30

  . . . about twenty years since at the Assizes at Bury [St. Edmunds] about thirteen were condemned and executed for this offence, namely, for being Gypsies.

  Sir Matthew Hale 1649

  King’s Coroner

  Canterbury

  ‘Mr Loveridge, will you tell this court when you last saw the deceased?’

  ‘I met him by the mill race at Denne’s Mill by St Radigund’s, on the second of August, about half past nine at night. I can’t be exact about that time, for I have no timepiece, but it was a little after Bell Harry chimed.’

  ‘Was this an accidental meeting, or by arrangement?’

  ‘By arrangement.’

  ‘On whose part?’

  ‘Mr Chown’s, sir.’

  ‘And who decided the place?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘I knew he’d have something to say to me that he wouldn’t want others to hear, and the water runs hard there.’

  ‘Did you know Mr Chown before that time?’

  ‘Yes, I’d met him once. He came preaching in a village I passed through on my way to Canterbury and I went back on the cart with him.’

  ‘So he knew where to find you, Mr Loveridge?’

  ‘He sent a message by Mrs Chown, sir.’

  ‘By Mrs Chown? And what did he want to see you about?’

  ‘On account of my seeing Ellen – Mrs Chown.’

  ‘You were having an affair with Mrs Chown?’

  ‘I was, sir, I am.’

  ‘Tell the court what happened when you met him.’

  ‘He . . . he was greatly upset, sir, about the business I had with Ellen – with Mrs Chown. He told me he loved her, in spite of everything. He said he would do anything to convince me to give her up, that she was the world to him.’

  ‘And what did you say to that?’

  ‘I told him ’twas the same for me, that I couldn’t give her up, that I loved her too and she me.’

  ‘And how long is it that you have been engaged in this adulterous liaison with Mrs Chown?’

  ‘I can’t think of it as ’dulterating, sir, for I knew her before he did. To my mind he was ’dulterating me, for she was mine first.’

  ‘May I ask you to clarify, then, Mr Loveridge, exactly how long it is that you have known the lady?’

  ‘’Bout five years on and off. I was encamped about half-way ’tween Oxford and Wycombe, but I got forcibly took off by my wife and her brothers and by the time I got back there she was gone, wived with Mr Chown, and I never see’d her again till nigh on a year ago, and that was accidental, and here in Canterbury.’

  ‘You have a wife, Mr Loveridge? And where might she be now?’

  ‘I can’t say as to that. She may turn up again with her relations for the hopping next month, as I work now on the same farm as we went to for the last lot of bines. If she do, I shall need ask Mr French can I not make myself scarce until she and they be gone away again. But I don’t think she’d care much to see me anyroad.’

  ‘I think it would be advisable for you not to “make yourself scarce” until the means by which Mr Chown met his death have been determined, and I am sure the constabulary will agree with me. So you resumed your liaison with Mrs Chown last year?’

  ‘I went back to loving her reg’lar, if that’s what you mean, yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I expect that is more or less what I mean.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him, sir, to get her to myself, if that’s where you are a going with this.’

  ‘Nobody has yet suggested that you did, Mr Loveridge. Perhaps you will let me continue . . . You said of Mrs Chown that – let me consult my notes here – she was “mine first”. I had been given to understand from the deceased’s friends and colleagues that Mrs Chown was a widow when he married her, a widow with an infant son.’

  ‘She wunt no widow, sir.’

  ‘No? So do you know, then, who was the father of her elder child?’

  ‘That was me, sir.’

  ‘I . . . see. So you met Mr Chown by the mill race that night by his invitation, you being the father of Mr Chown’s wife’s first child and now once more her lover. Tell us what you judged to be the deceased’s state of mind when you met him.’

  ‘As I said, he was mightily upset.’

  ‘Disturbed, shouting?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. That was not his way. I mean, I didn’t know him well, that being only the second time he and me ever spoke, but I heard him preach and even then he was quiet-like, though what he said was what you’d remember for there was no bluster about him so you listened hard instead. He seemed angrier with me for not having told him my true name before.’

  ‘Indeed. Are you in the habit of using false names, Mr Loveridge?’

  ‘It wunt really a false name, sir, it was my grandfer’s.’

  ‘I see . . . And how would you describe Harold Chown’s manner towards you that night?’

  ‘He was sorrowful, I would say. Not angry, more despairing. He asked me would I leave off seeing Ellen, and I said I couldn’t.’

  ‘Try to remember exactly what he said – what you both said.’

  ‘First thing he said was: “Boswell! It’s you! I did wonder,” or something like that. He’d taken a bit of a fancy to me on the way into Canterbury that time – the first time I met him. That happens with the preacher men, I’ve found. He said he was disappointed I’d not come to see him in Canterbury but now he knew why. He thanked me for meeting him – I remember him as being very polite. Then he said he knew Ellen had been betraying him with me, and that what hurt him nearly as much was that she couldn’t have managed it – not with the children to take care of – without the help of his grown daughter. He begged me to leave off, for he didn’t know how to bear such a cross – those were his words, sir. I said how I was sorry, but that I couldn’t let her go, and how by rights she was mine for I had made her bleed and not him—’

  The public benches rustled and muttered; the coroner cleared his throat and stared straight ahead.

  ‘Please continue, Mr Loveridge, but do recollect that there are ladies present.’

  ‘Well, he gev a bit of a start when I said that . . . just as them people up there did . . . but you did ask me to tell exackly what we said. Then he said he’d married her before God and she was his wife in the Lord’s eyes and what we did offended his holy law, to which I said what I’d said before about being her first and that if the Almighty had brought us together again it must be for a reason. He got the closest to being angry then, and said she wasn’t a tree I could steal apples from whenever I felt like it, and that every man could rise above his baser instincts, but sir, I dunt think of the lady in any base way. I just love her and she is the mother of my child, the only one I have, and there is no sermonising or law can change that. That being a Wednesday and my free day I had met her as usual that afternoon and she was still all about me, if you understand me, though I didn’t say that to him.’

  Sam paused and looked round the room, but Ellen wasn’t there. She too had been kept in a side room, so that she would not hear his evidence. He caught sight of Walter, sitting on the public benches, who nodded and gave him a wink of encouragement. Yet he still felt very alone.

  ‘Chown offered me money then but I could see he was defeated and didn’t like the business of the money, but it was almost his last go, not because he was afraid of giving away his gold, but more I think because he was afraid I might take it, and then he’d feel he’d bought her and I hadn’t thought much of her all along if I could let her go for a bit of coin. I said no, and that I wi
shed he’d not talked about money at all. Then I said he couldn’t keep me from my Tom, that anyone with eyes in his head could see he was mine, and that I would see him, come what may. And he said how he’d been the real father to Tom – for he had fed and clothed him and loved him like a father should and why could I not leave alone. He said that Tom was bound to love his little brother, him that is Chown’s child, more than he’d love me, even if I was his father. He asked me would I come between them two brothers, and I said I’d take ’em both on if he’d let me, for David is a fine little fellow. I saw him clench his fists then but I don’t think he thought to strike me, it was just him trying to get the better of his feelings. He said I’d no right to say that, for David was his boy, just as Tom was mine, and I had no argument to that but to say that a child should be with his mother. So you see we talked round in circles and got nowhere. I can’t give up Ellen and he couldn’t give up his boy. I said we should ask Ellen but he cried at that, poor fellow, saying he had done all he could for her, but he said quiet-like that I should never have David too and then we’d see what choice she’d make, for it would be an unnatural mother would desert her child, even if she were a false wife. And it’s the truth that I don’t know which way Ellen would go.’

  ‘So how did your meeting end?’

  ‘It being a heavy hot night, such as would give a man a headache he hadn’t deserved, it came on to rain plentiful. I said I would have to get back to Patrixbourne and that it was a relief most of the harvest was already got in. He just looked at me then with his face all wet from rain and tears and told me to go for he needed to think how to face this trial. So I left him then. I looked back before I turned the corner and he was still standing there with the rain running off his hat, staring into the water. I got home eventually, but caught a chill, and Mrs French had to nurse me. If she hadn’t then most likely Ellen would have had neither man left to love her.’

  ‘And you didn’t see Harold Chown again after you left him there in the rain?’

  ‘I didn’t, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Loveridge, you may step down.’

  ‘Sit there by that officer, Loveridge, you’ve already given evidence,’ said one of the clerks. ‘You can hear what the doctor has to say about it.’