Blackberry Bill

by Ned Reardon

  ‘Yes I see,’ said the sergeant, staring down at the boy’s image. ‘Before I organise a search, I’d like to take a quick look through the boy’s personal effects if I may. His school books, diary, et cetera. They may well provide us with some clue to his whereabouts.’

  The policemen were then escorted to the boy’s dormitory where they hurriedly began to snoop among his personal belongings. ‘We also need to establish what the lad was wearing,’ continued the sergeant, ‘and whether or not he’s taken any spare clothing with him.’

  Mrs Saffron then anxiously began to rummage through the boy’s remaining clothes hanging up in his wardrobe.

  Meanwhile, stood at the corner of the cul-de-sac waiting for the bus to Sittingbourne and observing all of the goings on, was the dreaded Bertha Musgrave. Renowned for her poisonous tittle-tattle, she was unashamedly the current owner of the largest of the many wooden spoons constantly stirring in the village. To her many victims, whose lives and reputations she has so wilfully destroyed, she remains the epitome of evil.

  She seldom visited her husbands’ grave, having felt no obligation to do so, but today was one of those rare occasions when she was pleased she had, albeit very briefly. Ruled by her insatiable nosiness and forgoing her trip to the shops, she plodded up and down the pavement tutting with impatience until the policemen finally re-emerged. They were accompanied by the Saffrons whom looked terribly worried, a very tearful Mrs Stickles, in her white pinny, her dumbstruck husband and most of the excited children whom lived there as well.

  Desperate to find out exactly what was going on, she seized upon her one chance to eavesdrop and proceeding by the gateway at a snail’s pace managed to ascertain a few snippets of the unfolding drama. She’d also noticed that one of the police officers was holding what looked suspiciously like a boy’s t-shirt. Busting a gut to relay her new tidings to whomever was prepared to listen, Bertha Musgrave rushed off back up the hill to the village proper, filling in herself the bits of their conversations which she hadn’t quite grasped. Unbeknown to the two police officers and everyone else concerned all hell was about to break loose!

  Chapter 27

  After he’d slackened the tie ropes like the man had already demonstrated, the boy was easily able to escape his bed, greeting the new day with a good, long stretch. He’d benefitted from a full night’s sleep, dreamless and rejuvenating and had high hopes of his next adventure upon the marshes. Overhead there was a thin ceiling of rippled cloud, low and motionless. The morning was dense with silence and everywhere was still except for a sudden invasion of a multitude of cabbage white butterflies. He watched them fluttering with life, dancing spontaneously and finally settling as gracefully as gently falling snowflakes. Inhaling the wholesome sea air he was again affected by a strange sense of attachment. He felt an affiliation with the place as if he’d always belonged here.

  There was something weird and wonderful about this washback, he realised. Cut off and somehow insulated from the rest of the world and all of its troubles, it seemed to him to glow in a different light. A separate, paradoxical environment almost, that contained a special peace and calmness of its own, one which he felt he could almost reach out and touch. Whatever it was he knew that he never wanted to leave it and was beginning to appreciate why the recluse had chosen this alternative lifestyle. Here in the wilderness there existed no fear or sadness. Here there was only life.

  But something was wrong. It was just too quiet. Cautiously he climbed the steps up into the vardo and stood hesitantly between the doorframes. He wasn’t sure why but he was not the least bit surprised to find it empty, having felt like he’d stepped aboard a ghost ship that had suddenly been forsaken in a dried up sea.

  Everything was out of place and incongruous, the air inside heavy with abandonment. The gypsy’s bed was unmade and nothing had been tidied away. A greasy frying pan had been left on the side of the stove. Dirty plates, cups and cutlery were piled high in the washing up bowl. The floor was messy and unswept and left behind on the draining board was the man’s pipe and tobacco pouch.

  Amid the chaos however, the boy noticed a folded sheet of writing paper lying on the sideboard. On it was scribbled a note which read; ‘HALP YOR SALF TO SUM GRUB BOY. I BE BACK LATA.’ He rubbed his sore head and was pleased that his bump had all but disappeared. He sat down at the man’s table and poured himself a bowl of cereal. Gazing out of the window he was content to sit quietly and wait for his return.

  Chapter 28

  Bertha Musgrave had maintained her furious pace all the way up from Greenporch Close and by the time she’d reached the high street on the crown of the hill, she was bent at right angles and gasping for breath.

  Towering above everyone else in the queue outside of Milton post office was one of her closest cronies and gossip buddy, Mrs Dorothy Smith. The woman was so thin she looked like a match with the wood scraped off.

  ‘All Gawd blimey, whatever’s the matter?’ she cried, fussing around her friend like an old mother hen.

  Holding a hand up to her heaving bosom and struggling to breathe, Bertha M replied, ‘Oh, give us a minute Dot, will you…Just while I catch my breath.’

  ‘But are you sure you’re all right, dear?’

  ‘In a moment Dot, I just need a bit of a breather.’ Wheezed Bertha M. Her large muscular tongue, aching to spill the beans but not yet able to communicate properly. She had a face much like a bulldog’s, chewing a wasp.

  Dorothy Smith bit her lip and fidgeted with impatience. To be perfectly frank not a lot had happened around the village of late and so she was determined to enjoy this one. Whatever it was that her friend was so desperate to tell her she knew it was bound to be good. But most annoyingly she had to endure another minute or so of the agonising silence before the exhausted women was finally able to speak.

  ‘Well Dot,’ began Bertha M, her lips had now formed into a conceited smirk. ‘He’s finally gone and done it!’

  ‘Who has?’ fired back the engrossed Mrs Smith.

  ‘Him!’

  ‘Him?... him who?’

  ‘Him what roams the marshes, Blackberry Bill, that’s who!’

  ‘Good gracious me, not him.’

  ‘Saw it all with my own eyes Dot. Strike me down dead if I didn’t!’

  ‘Oh my word Bee, what’s he done then?’

  ‘A dozen or so coppers I counted.’

  ‘Oh no, where?’

  ‘Down that children’s home, that’s where!’

  ‘Heavens above, not the little ones.’

  Bertha Musgrave raised her brow and nodded in disgust.

  ‘No, please don’t tell me it’s the kids, Berth.’

  ‘It’s my poor old Albert I worry about, Dot. Never a moment’s peace. Him long in his grave and all. I shouldn’t wonder if he isn’t turning in it right this very moment knowing what I know.’

  ‘When was all this then?’ asked Dorothy S, becoming more frustrated with every passing second, knowing full well that she’d missed out on something colossal.

  ‘Not a quarter of an hour ago.’ Bertha M replied, gloating with glee. ‘But haven’t I always said it, Dot? Haven’t I always made it known? Wasn’t I right to say it?’

  Her friend’s head was bobbing up and down like a punkahwallah’s arm at the hottest hour of the day.

  ‘I knew he was a bad sort, that old Blackberry. I knew he’d do something like this, Dot.’

  ‘Bee, he hasn’t…’

  ‘He has, he’s gone and stolen one of the young urchins from the orphanage.’

  ‘Oh God no!’ gasped her friend, cupping her mouth with the palm of her hand.

  ‘A young boy, apparently.’

  ‘How awful!’

  ‘I clocked one of those coppers clutching an item of his clothing.’

  ‘I dare say that’ll be for
the sniffer dogs, Berth.’ Said the beanpole.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Oh, that poor child.’

  Bertha Musgrave’s wicked assumption had sparked into reality and now burned its course down the line of earwigging pensioners like a lighted fuse wire on a stick of dynamite.

  Chapter 29

  The gypsy had eaten his breakfast and was already out on the marshes digging up the pots as was his passion to do so. Earlier it had rained again quite hard and the weather this morning looked much the same as it did yesterday. Sunshine with scattered showers. But at least the rain had softened the dirt, he thought.

  Having heard the boy in the night, fidgeting around under the vardo, he’d decided to leave the clearing up to allow his young friend to sleep in and therefore was toiling alone. However, out on the cloudy horizon just before noon something peculiar began to occur. Somewhat baffled, he scratched his head whilst trying to work out what the strange dark shapes were slowly heading towards him. Soon he realised, to his utter consternation, that the black dots in motion were in actual fact people. Hundreds of the locals whom were obviously searching for the boy. He’d been half expecting something like this having already assumed that his young companion had run away from the children’s home. Dropping the digging fork, he ran back towards the washbacks in disarray knowing that he had to act fast or else he’d lose the boy forever.

  When he’d got back to the caravan, he noticed with much relief that he was already up and dressed. He was sat down in the grass playing with the pots again. ‘Quick boy, we’ve got to leave here now,’ he insisted, grabbing hold of the boy firmly by the wrist.

  ‘But why, Tom? Where are we going?’

  ‘Come on now,’ implored the gypsy. ‘There’s somemink else I’ve got to show you!’

  Both were then startled by the sudden maddening presence of a noisy bird which had swooped down out of nowhere and landed on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Hello Jack, what are you doing here?’ The boy stretched out his arm and allowed the bird to walk down to his fingers. ‘You crafty devil! How did you know where I was?’

  The jackdaw ruffled its black feathers and cawed continuously, seemingly pleased to have found its young master.

  ‘Tom, this is Jack,’ said the boy, cheerfully. ‘My faithful friend…What do you think of him?’

  The gypsy was more concerned about the search party which he knew must be drawing ever closer. ‘Aye lad, he’s a lively one,’ he remarked. ‘But boy, it ain’t safe here now, we’ve got to leave.’

  ‘Not safe?’

  ‘I’ll explain later. Come on, let’s go.’

  Chapter 30

  The boy then found himself to some extent being frog-marched back towards the orphanage beside the church, both buildings now appearing salient beneath the arch of an awesomely beautiful rainbow. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked, nervous at the thought of returning home so soon. The rain had ceased and the sun was shining behind cumulus clouds and he wanted to play down by the creek.

  ‘Not much farther to go now,’ promised the man, stomping along as if he was late for something.

  The boy had got it into his head that the gypsy man, for reasons of his own, was about to betray him. He was wholly convinced that the man wasn’t going to stop his relentless pace until he’d escorted him right up to the green porchway of the orphanage. ‘No I don’t want to go home!’ he protested, pulling away from the man.

  ‘Look’ere,’ began the gypsy. ‘Who said anyfink about going home? I just want to show you somemink, like I told you.’

  The boy was not yet persuaded and stood hesitating, doubt mingling among his thoughts.

  Just then the farmer came trundling along the dirt track in his brand new Massey Ferguson loading shovel. Farmer Pat was a proud and jolly fellow. The sleeves of his thick cotton lumberjack shirt were rolled up tight against his large biceps and he had a lighted hand-rolled cigarette wedged between his lips. Sat next to him in the cab of the tractor was his dainty little wife ‘Micky’, puffing on a No 6 cigarette and wearing a contented smile from ear to ear. Sitting in the raised front digging bucket of the noisy machine were their three young children, two fair headed boys and a girl with a mass of ginger curly hair. The children waved to the man and the boy with the bird on his shoulder and were all giggling with excitement, riding high on their dad’s new tractor. The gypsy and the runaway returned their smiles and waved back.

  The boy clammed up and began to distance himself but the gypsy really had no wish to upset him. In a much softer tone of voice he tried to explain. ‘Look, when I saw them words in your bag, l.a.n.g.l.e.y (he pronounced each letter individually such as a young child would do), I knew then that you must be my pipsqueak brother because they’re the same words as on me father’s gravestone over in that there mulladipoos.’

  ‘Brother?’ The boy mouthed the word but it was hardly audible. His jaw dropped and his pupils dilated and he didn’t trust his own ears. Had the man really said that?

  ‘Them words, Thomas Edwin Langley, gouged out of that slab. And he’s my father right enough, as sure as the sun in the sky and the wind and the sea and these’ere boodiful marshes. My mother swore blind to it and strike her down dead again if it ain’t the honest truth!’

  As regard to the aforementioned contentious issue, the boy was rendered temporarily speechless. However, he silently agreed to accompany the man and staggering like a zombie with his eyes wet with emotion, he managed to reach as far as the churchyard wall. Here he had to rest a while, trying desperately to make sense out of the inner conflict tearing his mind apart. The discerning gypsy sat down alongside him and kept quiet. Gazing back out admiringly at the wilderness of the marshland he was fully aware that what he’d just disclosed must have shocked the boy. But it was the only way.

  Chapter 31

  Leaping down from the churchyard wall the man gently took hold of the boy’s trembling hand and led him and his jackdaw slowly through the graves over to the great yew tree in the far corner.

  Suddenly a wayward gust of wind blew vehemently amongst the tombstones, rustling the leaves, stirring up twigs and dust and whistling its eerie melody as if attempting to wake the dead. Both man and boy squinted and cowered against the blast. The bird squawked and flapped its wings in protest. The gypsy was also peering around uncertainly in all directions as if he was somehow trying to read the omens. But then, as rapidly as it had formed, the freak whirlwind died away allowing the usual peace and calm to resume.

  ‘See there,’ said the man, pointing down at the boy’s parent’s gravestone. ‘That’s my father’s grave,’ he confided and once again he respectfully drew the sign of the cross symbolically on his chest.

  The boy was still disinclined to believe what he was hearing but following a brief pause then said with a degree of confidence, ‘You’re the one that always leaves the flowers, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aye, it was me whose put a few fresh petals over his grave from time to time…Out of respect like.’

  The boy nodded very slowly as if to commend the gypsy’s esteem for the parent they’d supposedly had in common.

  ‘Course, I never knew him but he’s my father all the same and you’ve got to show some respect and that for your father, aincher?’

  ‘What’s your other name then?’

  ‘What, d’you mean my family name?’

  ‘Yes, what is your surname?’

  ‘Well I’m a Baker, Tommy Baker is me… But what’s that got to do with it? It’s my mother’s maiden name not my father’s. You see, I’m a Baker because my ma and pa, God bless’em, never jumped the sticks.’ The gypsy finished his explanation by crossing himself.

  The boy felt even more confused.

  ‘That means that they’d never got spliced, you know, married like. Anyhow, when I saw them words in your ba
g,’ the man continued, ‘they’d set me thinking and I soon put two and two together and I knew then that you must be that sprog what I saved from that horrible yog which killed my father… I spose you’d be about ten now, aincher?’

  The boy nodded again.

  ‘I thought you was the lady’s baby. Never knew she was married to me dad…not until I got out of hospital.’

  The boy flopped to his knees beside the grave and tried to digest all of what his brain was consuming. The bird hopped over onto the headstone that he knew so well and settled down for another of the long waits he’d grown accustomed to.

  The man knelt down next to the boy. ‘Course, my father never knew he had a nipper in tow because my mother never told him. Somemink to do with her Romany pride and honour and that, I dunno. They were both young fools, she said. As stubborn as mules. She’d refused to give up her travellers’ life and likewise my dad couldn’t let go of the sea. So eventually they drifted apart and went their own separate ways…But they’d loved each other though and she told me, like it or not, that I was the living proof of their love…When I was growing up though, I never knew anything about him, not even his name. Can’t imagine why but my mother had never uttered a word of his being. Not until she was almost at death’s door, did she suddenly change her mind and blurt out everything that she thought I needed to know. And of course, she told me where I could find my father after she’d died and gone up there,’ he said, looking up at the clouds.

  Dumbfounded, the boy struggled to accept these revelations. For as long as he cared to remember he’d always yearned to be part of a real family. Now, suddenly and according to the gypsy, it would seem that he has his very own half brother who happens to be none other than Blackberry Bill, the infamous nomad of the marshes and the mysterious man that every other Miltonian was afraid of.