The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  ‘Lock up after me!’ she shouted, before rattling the bolt and crashing through the back door. Sam crossed the rear room, smaller than the parlour, and obediently secured the door.

  ‘Hello.’

  He turned round to see two small faces looking up at him from the hearthrug.

  ‘Dipsy man!’ crowed the youngest in delight, his fat hand proprietorially on the tender of the little train.

  ‘Can you make us a farm, sir?’ said Tom, without any preamble. ‘I’d like the cows painted black and white, for they’ll be the ones to give milk. And some brown ones I can take to market. And a horse and cart, one where you can take the horse out of the cart so he can do other things. And a big barn for putting the hay in.’

  Sam kneeled beside them.

  ‘I’ll make you your farm. I can take you to see one too, if you like.’

  ‘Can we go in a horse and trap?’

  Sam met Tom’s candid gaze. Davy was jigging with excitement. Sam knew he mustn’t make promises to them unless he could keep them. He thought of Sibela and Righteous, and wondered what the little girl’s wooden flowers looked like now, and of the village school in Patrixbourne, the children there, their parents, who could so readily teach to bait, to persecute. Yet Tom was so confident, and the bond between the two brothers itself made them stronger. Perhaps . . .

  ‘I shall have to see about the horse and trap,’ he said. ‘It might take a little time to organise.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ said Tom, as though that settled the matter.

  ‘Sam?’

  At last! Ellen stood in the doorway, her hands clasped, remote. He had not heard her come downstairs.

  ‘Mother needs to talk to Mr Loveridge, boys.’

  Mr Loveridge, is it? Sam felt a gnawing at his stomach that was nothing to do with hunger.

  ‘He’s going to make us a farm, Ma!’

  ‘That’s very kind of him. I hope you thanked him.’

  Will she not look me in the eye?

  ‘Would you come through to the front parlour?’

  ‘Ellen . . .’

  ‘Better that we talk privately, I think.’

  Sam touched the boys’ heads briefly, and got stiffly to his feet.

  ‘I’ll make you your farm, no matter what,’ he told them, then meekly followed Ellen. She stood in the middle of the room, her joined hands a barrier.

  ‘Mr Deakin told me not to visit you,’ she began.

  ‘He was right, Ellen, it was no place for you.’

  ‘You look thinner.’

  ‘I couldn’t eat in there – nor sleep much, either.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  What will I do now? ‘I don’t rightly know. I s’ll go back to Farmer French for a bit, I expect. Deakin said he wanted me back, and I’ll need to fetch Fred, and anyway, I don’t have anywhere else to go . . . apart from the Flying Horse, of course.’

  He watched for a reaction, but none came. He went on. ‘They turned my hut inside out, you know, the constables.’

  ‘They did the same here.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m sorry I brought all this trouble on you. But I’m sorriest about our baby,’ he said.

  Ellen looked down at her hands. He took a step forward – she retreated.

  ‘Oh Ellen,’ he said piteously. ‘I’d have swung for you!’

  Nothing.

  ‘Ellen, believe me. I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘No, I know you didn’t, Sam. We did. We killed a good man – sent him out of this world in misery.’

  ‘I love you, Ellen. I’ll always love you,’ he said helplessly across the chasm.

  As if he hadn’t spoken, she went on.

  ‘Judith is to wed her Walter. Then we’ll move. Wattie says he’ll look for work elsewhere.’

  ‘You’ll leave Canterbury? You’ll run away from me again?’

  ‘I never “ran away”. I had no choice, if you’ll remember. And I don’t this time, either. I’d to clean dog mess from the door yesterday. And on Monday there was soot thrown over the washing. The neighbours shun us and stop talking when I go past. Judith shouts at them, of course, but it makes no difference – or makes it worse.’

  She looked straight at him.

  ‘Did you expect to stay here?’ she asked coldly.

  ‘No. Never that. I couldn’t be here,’ he waved his arm vaguely in the direction of the piano, ‘amongst all his things. We . . . they . . . the Gypsies, I mean, when one of us dies we yag – we set fire to everything he’s owned: togs, wagon, bed, tools. Them that’s really strict will destroy a man’s dog and his horses, even, and bury ’em. When I walked off that day they’d’ve done for poor Fred if he hadn’t upped and followed me, because as sure as I stand alive in front of you I was dead to them. I was always taught that the yagging was to set the soul free, to cut it loose from what had tied it to this life. Now I see it’s more than that – it sets the living free too. Ellen, when I was in the gaol not knowing what they would do with me or if I’d ever see you again, I’d’ve done anything to have held you in my arms one more time, but I could no more lie with you in his bed up there than I could cut my own head off.’

  ‘It was Millie’s bed before I slept in it.’

  ‘You see? That wunt right either, Ellen, not for you, nor for poor Chown.’

  ‘They’ll let me have his body back now. He’ll be buried with her.’

  ‘Will you go back?’

  ‘No. I was driven away from there and now I’m not welcome here. Mother went back with John this morning – to Manchester. Even she’s lost her home now.’

  ‘Dordi, I’ve made a Gypsy of you,’ he said bitterly. ‘I’d best go before I do you more harm. But I mean it about Tom’s farm. I’ll stay long enough at French’s to do that for the boys. But promise me one thing, Ellen. Promise me that one day you’ll tell Tom that he’s my son and that I’d’ve done anything for him – and his little brother. Tell him his father wanted to know him and to love him.’

  She looked away.

  ‘Will you tell him, Ellen? Just nod, and I’ll leave you in peace.’

  She nodded.

  He turned away from her, taking hold of the latch on the front door. It was then that he lost his head at last. He dropped his hand, and faced her.

  ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done to me? ’

  ‘Please don’t shout, Sam – the neighbours!’

  ‘Damn you all to hell! ’ he yelled at the wall where he was sure Mrs Clerk listened. ‘Put a glass up – they say you hear better that way! ’

  He turned to her again, his voice quieter now but more menacing.

  ‘You talk to me about neighbours shunning you, do you? Ellen, I’ve passed my life – my life – having cottage doors slammed in my face. My mother being chased off like she was some mangy dog. The gavvers coming and turning us off a stopping-place – after dark, sometimes, when we’d no place to go and no lamps to get there if we did. As if God’s good earth was made for everyone but us! Got smuts on your washing, did you?’ he jeered. ‘You say that – you, a gauji who thinks getting clean is sitting in her own dirty bath water? Who’d scour the pots in that sink out there where you’d washed your drawers not half an hour before?’

  ‘I don’t . . . I—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt me! We made Harold’s life a misery and yes, in one way or another we killed him—’

  ‘Sam, please!’

  ‘What’re you afraid of? The gavvers at the door again? Would it satisfy your Christian soul if I was hauled off again and sorted proper this time? An eye for an eye? I can’t count the number of times that was given out from the pulpit in all them gaols – remember, lady, I was in Winchester ’cause of you. When I was strapped screaming on that frame it was you I saw before I blacked out, same as it was when Liberty and Caley near murdered me – ’cause of you. Well, it wunt just Harold we ruined, Ellen, remember that! A man I liked, by the way – not that I let that make any diffe
rence. Too sick for you, I was. My poor Lukey’s shamed for life. Couldn’t keep the man who’d promised he’d be with her always. She thought me a soft mush, right enough, and didn’t care who knew it. Made my life a misery for it. Well, she was right – soft for you and look how you treat me – no better’n her, ’cept you dress it up different.’

  He grabbed her hand, ignoring her tears.

  ‘Let go, Sam!’

  ‘Or what, Mrs Chown? Here, feel this.’ He bent his head and forced her hand upwards. ‘Feel the back of my neck.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Feel them bumps? I used to run my fingers over ’em in the dark, when I was in stir this last time. Wondering where the crack would come – that’s if I was lucky and they didn’t get it wrong and leave me strangling in their pit.’

  ‘Stop, for pity’s sake, stop!’

  He flung back her hand.

  ‘All right, then. I’ll come back with the farm. I’ve promised my son – our son! But you wunt have to clap eyes on me. I’ll get it to Judy, or Wattie.’

  He lifted the latch and slammed out the front door without a backward look. As Ellen sank to the floor she heard him snarling: ‘What’re you lot staring at? Mind your own bloody business!’

  Sobbing, Ellen didn’t hear the tentative footsteps, the patient breathing, raising her head only at a wary touch on her shoulder. She looked up into Tom’s face, which wore an expression she recognised as Sam’s. David stood beside him, his face wobbling as it did just before tears came.

  ‘Mother,’ said Tom. ‘Why was Sam shouting?’

  ‘Because I’ve sent him away. Because I was cruel. But he’ll bring you your farm, boys. He keeps his promises.’

  Still crouching, she put her arms round the solid little bodies, and thought: Hearts do break.

  *

  Sam tramped in a daze all over Canterbury. He went past St Mildred’s, where they had once met amongst the tombstones. Then he went into the fields, striking upwards towards Harbledown, before going deep into Blean Woods until he smelled the smoke of a campfire and retreated out again to look down on the city shimmering in the pale sunshine of that autumn afternoon. Descending by Hackington, he stood for a while in the cool, damp air of the parish church, transfixed by a stone skeleton carved upon a bier. Turning away from it at last he caught a glimpse in his mind’s eye of an aproned undertaker’s assistant leaning over Harold’s corpse on a metal gurney, palpating the right side of his neck for the artery, raising in his other hand the fluid-filled pump that would preserve him for his journey home to lie atop Millie’s coffin. He cried out to dispel the image and sank into a pew, covering his eyes, and found himself looking down on Harold’s dead face, his sutured mouth.

  ‘You have the gift,’ Sam’s mother had told him more than once. ‘No, I’m just a bit of a dreamer,’ he’d laughed back. Whatever it was, Sam didn’t want it now. He heard his mother’s voice warning him, ‘He’s not at peace, Sam!’

  ‘I’m all in!’ he exclaimed aloud. ‘If I could only get some sleep!’

  He staggered out into the slanting sunshine. The light, the grass, the birdsong and the gently weathered graves lifted his spirits. He thought of the tomb he’d just seen within the chancel. Why would that fine rai want to be cooped up in the dead air of a church when he could have the sunshine and the rain fall on him out here? A pied wagtail, the Gypsy bird, flitted across the path in front of Sam. Are you an omen, or just a little bird?

  Crossing the railway line he saw to the right Denne’s Mill rearing up, and veered away in a cold sweat, tangling himself instead in a cluster of narrow streets just beyond the line of the city walls. He knew that he should be making his way to Patrixbourne, but couldn’t tear himself away from where he knew Ellen sheltered with her sons, afraid to open the door to more insults. If she’d only let me at least protect them.

  Finally, inevitably, with the impassive mass of the city walls at his back, he crossed the road to the Flying Horse and made his way down the corridor into the back room, thankfully empty. He could hear a buzz of voices from the public bar at the front and waited patiently for someone to come through.

  ‘Sam!’ exclaimed the landlord’s wife, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Oh, it’s good to see you back!’ The warmth of her words opened the floodgates dammed by Ellen’s coldness. Sam sank onto a bench and his face crumpled.

  ‘Oh, you poor boy!’ she said, holding his shoulder. ‘You poor, poor thing! Wait a minute till I close up out there.’

  She bustled off to bolt the back door.

  ‘Now drink this. I’ve a slice of cold pie in the larder if you’d like that. You look done in. I always knew you was innocent. It was all in the Gazette what you said, and as I said to Percy, no one would be so honest and trusting if he really was to blame.’

  ‘He’s dead along of me, Letty!’

  ‘It was an haccident, Sam! The Crowner said so! It’s a marvel that no other poor beggar has fallen in that mill race before now. That rickety rail wouldn’t hold back a dandelion clock. It’s one thing taking railings away from the front of fine houses to make ’em into guns but quite another when a poor Christian slips in the wet – when we thought the war had done its worst. Oh, someone’s wanting served through there. Now don’t run off. I’ll bring you that pie.’

  She returned and put plate and cutlery in front of him.

  ‘Now you can tell me it’s none of my business, but give the lady time. I can see from your face you’re not the happy man you should be on a day like this. I’ve never seen your girl, for you was always careful and respectable – considerate of this house, I might add – but she must love you, Sam, or she’d never have risked everything a woman has to have met you the way she did. And it said in the Gazette that she lost her kiddie – your kiddie, I mean, Sam – and that makes a woman, if she’s a woman at all, not like herself. Those chapel people will have told ’er it’s divine punishment but she mustn’t believe that – what sort of God is it that would hurt a poor baby what’s done nothing wrong? Oh Sam, you’re all in! Have you still got the key to upstairs? Well, up you go now and get some sleep and then you’ll know better what to do after. I’ve not touched anything up there so it might be a bit dusty, but I’ll come and change the water on the wash-stand.’

  *

  I don’t know as I can bear this, he thought, turning the key in the familiar door. From down below came Letty’s cheerful voice talking to someone out the back.

  ‘Oh dear, ’ave you bin there long? I clean forgot to open up! And here was me wondering why I never had no custom but out front!’

  Inside nothing had changed, but the little room was unmistakeably deserted. The rag rug he had brought from Patrixbourne was still there, soft with dust, the bed made neatly as Ellen had always insisted it should be afterwards. He let his canvas bag slip to the floor, and shrugged out of his jacket. Hanging it on the back of the door he remembered with terrible clarity holding Ellen, his arms round her under her coat, and telling her that if he died in that moment, then he would die happy. How long ago was that?

  His memories were interrupted then by the thunder of feet on the stairs, followed by a tap at the door and Letty singing out his name. He let her in. She bustled across the room and picked up the tin ewer.

  ‘I’ll have this filled and back in two minutes.’

  ‘I can do it if you like?’

  ‘No, you sit yourself down and rest, and let me take care of it. The constables came, of course, but there wasn’t much here for them to upset.’

  He watched her leave, shaken by the strangeness of another woman being in that room, displacing the air with her movement and her noise.

  *

  It was a fine evening, so after work Judy and Wattie walked under the trees at Dane John, talking about their own future, about the life Ellen and Sam would have.

  ‘Let’s stay out a bit,’ she said. ‘Get ourselves a pie and a sweet stout for me. Deakin’s new clerk called by the office and told me Sa
m is out. Let’s give them some time to themselves – they’ve waited long enough.’

  Returning home, Judith announced her presence by slamming the back door. The kitchen and back room were in darkness. Must be upstairs – where else! She stiffened then – something rustled in the gloom and gave a muffled sob.

  ‘Lord, Ellen, what are you up to?’ Judith kneeled down and put her arms round her. ‘Where’s Sam?’

  Huddled together on the floor, Ellen told Judith everything they had said.

  ‘You’re a fool, Ellen Chown. You’re blaming the wrong man. Blame your grandfer for chasing Sam away with his shotgun. Blame them two brothers for near enough killing him. Blame your mother for not speaking up when she could have done – and all of them holier than thous that said you couldn’t keep your baby unless you had a husband – any husband. None of this is going to bring Pa back, is it? Nor give those little blighters upstairs a father. Let alone make you feel any better. Did he say where he was going, at least?’

  ‘No . . . Back to her, maybe.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. That’s the last place he’d go. He’ll be in Patrixbourne – or what about that room you had?’

  *

  As the light faded Sam undressed and washed automatically. Pulling back the covers of the bed and looking closely at the pillow and mattress, he sought the impress of their bodies, but found none. He buried his face in the sheets in search of her scent, but no trace was left. He felt cold, though Letty had lit the little grate for him, saying he looked like he needed warming up, even if the day had been so mild, but nevertheless it was a small relief to go to bed naked: prisoners had to lie down dressed. Finally he slid under the covers, and lying on his back, wept silently. From downstairs a murmur of voices rose and fell, punctuated sometimes by laughter and occasionally by shouts. Someone dropped a glass and he heard Letty scolding. His world had stopped here in this drab little room, whilst the rest went on turning as it always had.