Blackberry Bill

by Ned Reardon

  ‘What happened to your mother?’ asked the boy, consciously beginning to accept the fact that they shared the same father. Indeed there were no physical similarities between the two of them whatsoever but through their veins flowed the old sea dog’s blood. His lost sons, finally united by an innocent hand of fate.

  ‘Died, God bless’er heart,’ the man replied, crossing himself. ‘Ten years back…consumption. We lived over near Tenterden way in those days…you know, for the fruit picking and that like I told you, ankas n’gurlos mostly.’

  ‘So after your mother had sadly passed away, you came here to Milton Regis?’ Asked the boy, now desperately wanting to believe it all as the unequivocal truth.

  ‘Yep, me and our horse Toby and my mother’s vardo. We all came here looking for my father, the only family I thought I had left.’

  The boy held back his question for a moment trying to summon up the courage to ask, ‘Did…did you actually meet my father then, I mean our father?’

  Before answering this the gypsy smiled to himself knowing that the boy had finally begun to acknowledge him as his sibling. ‘Nope, like I said he never knew me … I didn’t even get the chance to see him. I’d only come here a divvus before the fire. I didn’t even realise it was my father’s boat gone up in smoke. Not until I was all better and out of hospital. Course, I had to tell’em to sell Toby, my gry, otherwise he would’ve died too….of starvation.’

  Turmoil and frustration had somehow changed into clarity and calm. The boy was beginning to understand and now listened more attentively.

  ‘I’d lain flat on my back with about as much strength as a kitten for almost a year, having one operation after the other in that East Grinstead hospital and when the doctors finally got me fixed up I came back here the following winter to claim my property.’

  ‘Do you mean your caravan, Tom?’

  ‘Aye, and all my mother’s things she’d left me. Except when I got here I reckoned on a staying a while because I didn’t have Toby anymore and it’s a cushti atchin tan as anywhere…And besides, I’d nowhere else to go anyway. Like I said, I ain’t got no one left on my mother’s side because all that lot are now dead and buried in the mulladipoos. Anyhow, at the time, I still thought my father was alive and well somewhere and I had every intention of finding him. But shortly after I’d got back’ere, this swanky looking gadgie turned up out of nowhere - all suited and booted, he was. He said he was from the Gazette and that they wanted to do a follow-up story or somemink about that terrible night. Straight away he pounced on my case trying to wangle things out of me. Course, I just let him babble on, all the time asking questions…Fair do’s, he seemed a decent sort I spose but I’d got it in my head to keep schtum. The last thing I needed was for my present whereabouts to be plastered all over the front page of the local rag. It would’ve been like waving a red flag in front of every stroppy gorger in the town. So of course, I kept my trap shut and in the death he got fed up with me…Before the mush cleared off altogether though, he was kind enough to leave me some copies of the old newspapers.’

  The boy looked at the man somewhat furtively, now reminded of the scrapbook, he’d secretly read yesterday.

  ‘You see,’ pursued the gypsy, ‘this was when I first learnt the names of the barge folks that’d died in the fire that winter afore. It near on knocked me off my feet when I read that it was my own father and his wife who’d been killed - our poor ole dad here and your dear, sweet mother.’ The gypsy crossed himself twice and the boy copied him.

  ‘I promised him though, in my prayers,’ he continued, sparing the tearful boy the cruel truth of those wretched days succeeding the reporter’s visit, when he’d lain suffering on his bed, brokenhearted, sobbing with grief and haunted by the recurring nightmare of his father’s premature death. ‘I swore him an oath that I wouldn’t rest until I’d found his flesh and blood, his and mine!’

  The boy was struggling to contain all of his pent-up emotion.

  ‘Trouble was, I never knew which kid’s home the nurse had whisked you off to, or who I could ask to find out…But, as God’s me judge boy, I must’ve banged on the door of every one of’em this side of the Medway, including that place there!’ he explained, pointing a little resentfully at the Greenporch orphanage. ‘And d’you know what, everywhere I went, I was either swore at, spat at, or forcibly turned on my heels and sent packing by the gorgers…After a while I began to wonder, what was the point of it all? It seemed to me that nobody was interested in what I’d got to say. Even if I had found you, they wasn’t going to let me see you. I’d wasted month after month roaming here, there and everywhere, in all weathers too, searching for you. Then one day, and it pains me to say it boy, when I was soaking wet, tired out and burning up with fever, I had to beg my broken heart to finally let you go…But I’ll tell you this young’n, as I kneel here before this house of the Lord, that it never once crossed my mind that you might only be a stone’s throw away all the while. I just thought I was on my own again.’

  The boy stared into the man’s dark eyes. ‘You saved me when I was a baby,’ he said, with a deep emotion beginning to constrict his windpipe.

  ‘Aye, it was me boy who done it. When I saw them flames raging I knew it must be one of those barges on the creek. So I ran down to it faster than old Toby and I saw this bargeman and his woman trying their hardest to dowse it out with buckets of water. It’s still down there that barge, what little’s left of it, alongside that rusty old tug.’

  ‘What did they look like?’ asked the boy, aching to learn any slightest detail of his parent’s features but shivering at the thought that he’d already stepped among the charred remains of their former home and livelihood.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The bargeman and the woman!’ retorted the boy, unable to prevent himself from feeling just a little bit jealous. ‘My mother and father.’

  ‘Didn’t much notice. Excepting the light from the fire it was awfully del and of course I never knew it was my father at the time. Everyfink happened so fast, next minute I knew they were gone. The decking seemed to collapse directly under their feet… The poor souls didn’t have a chance.’

  Listening to his brother’s harrowing account of what had actually occurred on that tragic night, the boy felt a great knot tighten in his stomach and tears stinging the corners of his wide eyes.

  ‘That’s when I heard this baby screaming its head off. They’d put you safe boy, up at the end of the boat, away from the flames. All wrapped up in a cosy white blanket you was, snuggled up in a bushel box…Then I saw them flames jumping and roaring and spreading fast, with the wind you see…and I only just managed to get you off in time, thank God…Funny that though, you being my baby brother all along and I never knew it.’

  Now the boy was weeping quietly.

  ‘That’s why I’ve got all these burns,’ explained the man, before standing upright and unbuttoning his shirt, revealing the full extent of his awful injuries. The plain fact was that he was still only a man in his late twenties but his scarring had aged him terribly. Even so, he carried a wise head on his young shoulders. ‘Yucky blighters, ain’t they?’ he added, vivaciously.

  Sympathetically, the boy studied the skin on the man’s neck and chest and it looked to him as though it had partly melted away. Twisted, ugly, yellow and purple scars. Such an unjust reward for a truly brave act of humanity which has cost him dearly. He much pitied his elder sibling and stricken with a gut wrenching sense of guilt, wished he too had croaked along with his parents so as to waiver his poor brother’s sufferance. In his young heart there was one thing more precious than life and that was love itself.

  He was humbled by what he’d been shown but his illegitimate gypsy brother seemed almost proud of his disfigurements, as if they were the wounds of battle inflicted by the enemy in an heroic war. And not once had he heard this modest man complain of his crosse
s to bear. Nor did he seem bitter or sad with regard to the prejudiced treatment he’d received year after year from the local populace. Even his own kind had felt fit to ostracize him. The boy bowed his head in shame.

  Watching him fussing over the grave, the boy then understood that it must have been his brother who had bought his parent’s beautiful headstone. Paid for through years of sweat and toil digging up the pots. And he’d done this deed alone, thought the boy, out of love and respect for the father he’d been deprived of. The father, both of them had never known.

  Chapter 32

  Both the man and the boy were conscious of the fact that they were no longer alone. In actual fact it now appeared that half the townsfolk had turned out to join in the search for the missing boy and were now lining the graveyard’s perimeter, effectively entrapping them. Some were sitting on the churchyard wall itself whilst others peered over it. The news of the so called kidnapping had spread like wildfire, especially when one busy old blabbermouth now skulking amongst the crowd had ignited a malicious rumour that the loner, Blackberry Bill, had abducted the child.

  ‘There’s the culprit!’ cried one of the scores of angry faces. ‘Come on then lads, let’s get him!’ bawled another. Through the grapevine, it’d become apparent to the volatile mob, whom were now ready to lynch the gypsy with their coshes and batons held aloft, that the captive had somehow escaped his brutal abductor who in turn had chased him here. They were all positively seething and collectively baying for the man’s blood with exception of the paranoid schizophrenic gravedigger. Apart from feeling narked and somewhat put out by all of the intrusive company, old Joseph Crow couldn’t have cared less and continued working like a navvy to finish his hole before the pubs closed.

  Stood under the church lychgate at the spearhead of this upheaval were the boy’s legal guardians, along with a number of officers from the local constabulary whom now believed the gyspy to be highly dangerous. Mr and Mrs Saffron, desperately wishing to protect and comfort their ward, had to be restrained by force. A German Shepherd, held firm on a short leash, had been unmuzzled and was barking continuously. Amid escalating jeers and insults from the belligerent crowd the inspector in charge, intent on apprehending the fiend, finally began to speak through his loudhailer. ‘I CALL UPON YOU THERE, THE PERSON KNOWN FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES AS BLACKBERRY BILL, TO STEP AWAY FROM THAT CHILD AND TO GIVE YOURSELF UP FREELY… TO ATTEMPT ESCAPE WOULD BE FUTILE. YOU ARE COMPLETELY SURROUNDED!’

  The gypsy wasn’t the least bit concerned but the boy became very upset by the policeman’s demands. He screamed out at the approaching throng. ‘But you don’t understand. He’s not going to hurt me, he saved my life. This is my brother and I love him!’

  The boy then looked up at his saviour and noticed a tear trickle down the side of his crooked, purple face. He could do nothing more than sob his heart out as he affectionately embraced his courageous, loving brother.

  Gasps of shock and disbelief and from some even cries of disappointment, reverberated around the mass of onlookers, most of which then soon began to disperse.

  ‘That’s our father,’ said the gypsy proudly, fighting back his own tears. ‘Lying alongside your mother… And you’re my little brother. And now you’re my family.’

  Chapter 33

  The Norfolk coast, the year 2000.

  Tom Langley stared aimlessly up at the ceiling, his mind still searching among the remnants of his childhood memories. He’d already rooted out and relived a great deal of those precious moments he’d spent with his gypsy brother. The hot summers when they’d swam together in the creek or in the pond on the mysterious, colourful island. He thought of their many fishing trips and the fish they’d caught. All of the different animals they’d cared for on the marshes and those intriguing pots and bottles, like buried treasure, they’d dug up out of the ground. And he remembered especially those times when they’d laughed and cried together.

  The fact that they shared their father’s Christian name was merely a coincidence but he’d been thinking about the other Tom a lot these past few days and of those strange marshes where they’d miraculously found each other. In the intervening years since that memorable day in the churchyard, when the police had arrested his brother for his own protection and subsequently released him without charge, they’d remained very close.

  Tom was now an affluent designer of luxurious yachts for the super rich, having gradually worked his way up through the lucrative industry from the humble beginnings of an apprentice Boatwright. He put the success of his career mainly down to his brother’s continued love and support and not least his shrewdness in matters of finance. He felt that he owed him everything.

  Contrary to his Romany tradition and despite his younger brother’s immense wealth, the sagacious gypsy had always refused to abandon his frugal but happy life on the marshes. He’d kept his promise though and repaired that little boat in which Tom had learnt to sail on Milton Creek. As a boy he’d proudly named her ‘The Potdigger’, hand painting the letters himself and then many years later, when he could well afford his own private yacht, again he’d named her after his eccentric brother before setting off from the Isle of Wight and sailing her around the globe.

  He’d fled here to this run-down B&B beside the sea, with its broken tap, moth-eaten curtains and wonky old bed, simply because it was as far away as he’d wanted to run. But it is somewhere he has come to appreciate. A vast, lonely shore along which he’s allowed himself to grieve. To weep. And to remember. Three days ago he’d been respectfully informed that his brother, better known as Blackberry Bill, had passed away. He was fifty-nine years old and he died alone but peacefully in his mother’s vardo upon those marshes beloved to them both.

  Tom got up and reached for his bag. There was nothing else he could do other than to accept what had happened. The funeral is tomorrow and so now he must leave. After attending to his bill he stepped outside and stood on the veranda for a moment, filling his lungs with the fresh air blowing down from across the North Sea. Before getting into his car he took one last affectionate look at the deserted dunes of the sweeping bay.

  Finally, he turned the key to the ignition and somewhat apprehensively drove his way back to the Milton marshes.

  THE END

  Glossary

  Romany....... English

  ankas....... pears

  atchin tan....... stopping-place

  chavvie....... gyspy child

  cushti....... good

  del....... dark

  dik....... look

  dinlo....... fool

  divvus....... day

  divvy....... stupid

  gadgie....... non gypsy man

  gorger....... non gypsy person

  gry....... horse

  gurlos....... cherries

  jel....... go

  mulladipoos....... graveyard

  mush....... man

  simmin....... soup

  vardo....... caravan

  wafti....... bad

  wongur....... money

  yog....... fire

  yok....... eye

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to offer my most sincere gratitude to my agent and editor, James Essinger, for his belief in me; his professionalism and his invaluable advice.

  My heartfelt thanks also for their kind assistance to my late mother, Patricia ‘Micky’ Reardon, George and Marjorie Broomfield, Christine Melloy, Jack Shilling and the staff at the Old Court Hall Museum.

  Special thanks to my dear friend Sarah Heathfield for her lasting patience, dedication and hard work in typing up the manuscript, and to Charlotte Mouncey for the cover design and the typesetting.

  Above all, a great big thank-you to my lovely wife Judy for all her help and for encouraging me to finish the book.

 
Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments