The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  ‘Well all right, then.’

  Brian sauntered off through the trees back towards his unit, grinning like a man who’d had his oats – maybe a nibble rather than the whole nosebag on this occasion, but there was nothing wrong with keeping a man’s appetite strong – and she set off in the other, down the steep slope towards the Old Rose and Crown where her people were camped.

  She knew every path and hollow by heart and so didn’t need a torch, which was just as well, given the blackout. The woods grew older and thicker down towards the road, and she made a detour to avoid one tree in particular – a certain old oak, broken and hollow, standing aloof in a clearing of its own as if avoided by the other trees. It was not that the oak was actually malicious, but such trees were long-lived, and a hollow heart was always a dangerous thing. Their roots reached hell itself, it was said, and allowed all manner of nastiness up into the world, like the demon huntsman Harry-Ca-Nab who roamed these parts. No, she didn’t fear the hollow oak, but on a night like tonight, when so much death was in the air, it was wise not to tempt fate.

  She moved silently through the wood and out onto the road, the fires in the city themselves hidden but their glow still a poisonous orange twilight which allowed her to see the way home.

  While she was glad that Brian hadn’t made a fuss about seeing her home, she wondered all the same if he would have been more insistent if she’d been a nice, respectable village girl instead of Roma. No doubt he imagined that any unsavoury characters she might meet were of her people anyway, and while there was a grain of truth in that, there were more dangerous types than just her kin attracted to these woodlands – especially on a night when the chaos of an air raid was ideal cover for all manner of dark deeds.

  She unfolded the blade of her clasp-knife and held it loosely in the folds of her shawl as she walked.

  Of course, if she had been a young virgin there was no way on God’s green earth that she would have been allowed out after dark, let alone unchaperoned. But she was married to a respectable husband and had three sons by him (though the Lord hadn’t seen fit yet to grace her with a daughter), and she had the Sight. All of these brought her as much respect and trust as any woman could expect. And as she’d learned from her father, uncles, brothers and sons, what was that respect for if not to be exploited?

  She’d Seen this raid, just as she’d been Seeing things for as long as she could remember: the weather; the hiding places of lost objects; the best horses to buy and sell. She gave the excuse that having predicted the raid, she had to watch it, and nobody had argued. Nobody had expressed any desire to come with her either, because although they profited from her Sight they also feared it. It was her business, just like horse trading was men’s business, and the aggressive policing of a virgin’s purity was women’s business.

  There had been a coaching inn at the bottom of the road for as long as anyone could remember – a place to change horses before the steep climb up and over the hills into Worcestershire. Her people had enjoyed its hospitality for generations, even when it was replaced by a large house-turned-pub called the Old Rose and Crown, whose stables were used for much the same purpose. In the blackout all that could be seen of it was the silhouetted peak of its gabled roof giving the impression that it was closed and deserted for the night, but she knew that the men would be having a lock-in, drinking grimly and listening to the raid, speculating pointlessly about what was being hit and whether the bombs were getting closer. Behind the pub were the stables, and in a field behind that were the tents and caravans of the camp.

  For the same reason that the pub was dark, both the men’s and women’s fire-pits at the centre of the camp were dark and cold, but the darkness was busy with the chatter of women coming from the larger tents and vardos. Two boys screamed past her making nnyeeoooww! dattadattadatta! noises as they fought the air war with sticks and stones. She thought about all the terrified people huddling in air raid shelters waiting for their homes to be destroyed; those proud buildings of bricks and mortar were little more protection from a German bomb than a crude bender made from sticks and cloth.

  She was tired – wearied to the soul with it all – but for respect’s sake made her way to the largest and most ornate of the caravans, climbed the steps and opened the door. Warm light and chatter, and the sweet tang of pipe tobacco washed over her as she stepped inside.

  Mami Rudge was in her rocking chair smoking her pipe, with her feet up to the pot-belly stove, holding court over four other women who were embroidering the bodice of a wedding dress, which took up most of the vardo’s floor space in a great confection of white lace. She didn’t join in their chatter, content to observe with a shrewd eye and occasionally lean forward to point at something that needed attention with the stem of her pipe. As consort to the chief man, Bill ‘Shiner’ Rudge, together they’d shepherded the four families of the Rudges, Claytons, Smiths and Preddies to safety and prosperity through the thirty-odd years since the Black Patch, and Mami’s power was on display all around her: the finest Worcester porcelain on the walls; the most delicate Nottingham lace on the table; rows of horse brasses and pewter tankards polished to mirror brightness. Now in her seventies, when she got about at all it was with a stick, but her presence roved the camp unimpeded. Mami might not have had the Sight, but she was drabarni all the same, and there was precious little in this world or the next that escaped her attention.

  Annabel kissed the old matriarch on one leathery cheek and said, ‘Hallo, Mami. You’re well, I hope.’

  Mami reached up to pat Annabel’s hair briefly. ‘Hello, duck. Did you see your bombs, then?’ There was just a hint of disapproval in her voice.

  ‘They’re not my bombs, Mami. But I seen them, yes.’

  ‘And did they do any-odd different from what you expected bombs to do?’

  ‘No, Mami.’

  ‘Well then.’ Mami sucked on her pipe and nodded to herself. ‘You’ll take tea? Tilly!’ she called, without waiting for an answer. ‘Brew for Anna here, me duck.’

  ‘Yes, Mami.’

  Tilly was Mami’s youngest married granddaughter and happy to oblige in this, as in most things. It was the last thing Annabel wanted, but refusing hospitality was unthinkable. While she was being poured a cup of sweet black tea, Mami’s eldest daughter-in-law, Jess, passed her a needle and thread, and she set to work adding a cluster of forget-me-nots to the dress. She had to admit, it was a pretty piece of cloth. Maisie Smith was a lucky girl – lucky too to be marrying the youngest Clayton boy and Annabel’s brother-in-law, Peter. Everybody knew it, and Mami most of all. A dress this expensive was impossible to refuse, and the obligation it created for Maisie’s parents couldn’t be avoided.

  ‘Why on earth d’you want to go up Beacon Hill to watch folks gettin’ bombed?’ asked Jess with a shudder. ‘It’s morbid, that is.’

  ‘Aye, and dangerous, too,’ added Mami. ‘Though not so dangerous as some other things folk could be doing, I dare say.’ There was no tone to it at all, but just the same Annabel fancied she caught a glance from the old woman, nothing more than a sidelong flicker of an eyelid, and her heart suddenly beat hollow with fear. Did Mami know about Brian? Was she fishing for a reaction? Or was Annabel’s own guilty conscience making her see things? She forced herself to finish her tea calmly and join in with the gossip, and when she’d stayed long enough for politeness’s sake she made her apologies and returned to her own vardo.

  She looked in on her two youngest, who were sleeping soundly despite the excitement of the air raid, and took herself to bed. She lay there for a long time listening to the grumbling of the guns, and thinking about Brian’s dear, infatuated fumbling.

  When her husband Harry thumped into bed beside her, he reeked of beer and the smell of another woman. It wasn’t the first time, and it amazed her that husbands thought that their wives couldn’t notice such a thing; or maybe it was just that after so long Harry had finally ceased to pay her the respect of even pretending to disguise it.
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  ‘Where w’you earlier tonight?’ he slurred, kicking his heavy boots off.

  ‘I went up Beacon Hill to watch the air raid,’ she whispered. ‘Keep your voice down or you’ll wake the babbies.’

  ‘Should stay at home with the other wives,’ he grumbled. ‘Shaming to me it is, you tramping about like you do.’

  She bit her lip and stayed silent.

  ‘You ’ear me, woman?’ he barked, and cuffed her. Even drunk and in the dark, his aim was damnably good.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll stay close to camp.’

  * * *

  The year turned and summer harvest work dried up. Rationing bit into householders’ willingness to part with a penny for half a dozen wooden pegs, or a bit of laundry, or even a fortune told. Even though the horse trade boomed, food wasn’t any easier to come by, and the women supplemented their larders by foraging in the woodland. By October there was plenty to find – late apples and hazelnuts, sweet chestnuts, sloe berries – but the wood was only so big, and as autumn deepened there was an increasing danger of running into locals who had the same idea, or worse still, soldiers.

  When Harry eventually caught her with Brian, Annabel didn’t feel fear or even anger. Both of those emotions were common enough in her marriage. What eclipsed her mind as he came storming through the bushes was the monumental unfairness of it all. He had no business being this deep in the woods when he should be off labouring for the army, or better yet drinking. If he’d come looking for her especially, he definitely hadn’t expected to see what Brian was doing to his wife, because he stopped dead and his mouth dropped open.

  She had her back against a tree, petticoat rucked up around her waist, one hand steadying herself on the trunk and the other clutching Brian’s hair with his face buried between her parted thighs. It was almost funny, watching Harry’s face as he tried to work out what Brian was actually doing; if it had been Brian’s cock inside her instead of his tongue, that would at least have been understandable. Never mind that a woman’s sexuality was corrupting to menfolk in the first place, that which lay below the waist was so unclean that to even wash shirts and skirts in the same basin was forbidden. For a Roma, especially one with such a traditional cast of mind as Harry Clayton, it was hard to think of a worse act. What Brian was doing to her was literally unthinkable, but dear sweet gadjo that he was, he didn’t care about any of that. He just wanted her.

  She called out to warn Brian, but by the time he looked up Harry’s shocked paralysis had broken and he was charging at them, bellowing.

  He grabbed Brian by the back of his uniform and flung him at a nearby tree, then followed up with his fists as she pulled at his clothing and screamed at him to stop. Brian had some army training, but Harry was a veteran of dozens of bare-knuckle fights and poor Brian didn’t stand a chance. All she could hear was Harry grunting, ‘My wife! My wife!’ to the rhythmic meat-packing slaps of his fists hammering into Brian’s head and ribs. She couldn’t honestly blame Brian when he reeled away in a crouching run, arms sheltering his head, and disappeared into the trees. She was half-tempted to do the same.

  As Harry came towards her there was a hunger for blood in his eyes that no amount of begging or submission would feed, so even though her heart was beating hollow with terror, she stood her ground.

  ‘You’ll not touch me,’ she dared him. ‘I—’

  ‘Shut your trap, whore!’ he barked, and backhanded her, drawing blood. ‘I’ll not what? Eh? What will I not?’

  ‘And why not?’ she shot back. ‘You make a whore out of Hettie Pritchard – don’t think I don’t smell it on you! What right have you to complain of another man making a whore of me?’ He was so two-faced he even flinched at her use of the word.

  She spat a mouthful of her own blood back in his face. ‘I have the Sight, idiot!’ she retorted. ‘I am favoured! If you kill me you’re cursed!’

  That gave him pause. Like everyone else, he believed absolutely in curses and took such a threat seriously. Annabel might not be drabarni yet, but her gifts were unquestioned. It was only when he latched his hands about her throat and began to squeeze that she realised how badly she had underestimated the injury to his male pride.

  ‘I’ll bear it,’ he growled, shoving her head against the tree. ‘I’ll bear your curse, witch, because there are some things that will not be borne!’

  Choking, she pried at him with her fingers and beat at him with her fists, but she might as well have tried to uproot the tree itself for all the good it did. Her lungs heaved, burning. There was a fire in her chest, and its roaring was in her ears and its smoke was darkening her eyes.

  ‘Be cursed then!’ she mouthed, and her words formed out of the surrounding rustle of leaves and branches, the forest giving her a voice where she lacked breath of her own. He looked around in alarm, gave a little whimper and squeezed harder. ‘I curse you and all that you do from this day forth,’ she said in her forest-voice. ‘Your horses. Your money. Your blood. I curse it all to dust.’

  Then the darkness covered everything, and it became everything, and she died.

  * * *

  And she watched.

  * * *

  Harry Clayton dug a shallow grave in the soft earth, and covered the corpse of his wife. By the time he finished it was late afternoon and he hurried back to the Old Rose and Crown, but it was not yet open, so he shut himself in his vardo. He had a couple of stiff tots from a jar of homebrew while looking at Annabel’s things: her skirts, her shoes, a half-darned stocking neatly folded on her sewing box. He had another tot, squared himself, and went out to start asking if anybody had seen his wife.

  The men searched the woods while there was still light, and Harry made sure to be the one to check the spot where her body lay. He stood inches from her corpse, calling, ‘Annabel! Anna, my love, where are you?’ until the other searchers were safely past.

  When no sign of her could be discovered and it was too dark to see, the men returned to the camp, intending to make further plans over ale, but the Crown remained closed and dark, and the landlord didn’t reply to any shouts or thumps at his front door.

  Then the soldiers appeared.

  They weren’t in uniform and some of them had masked their faces with hankies, and they carried sticks and clubs instead of guns, but it was obvious who they were. They outnumbered the Roma by at least half again. Their leader demanded that the gypsies hand over the man who had so badly beaten their fellow that he was pissing blood, and then the whole thieving pack of them could fuck off away from the homes of decent folk.

  Shiner Rudge asked him was that what decent folks did, then – wore masks and threatened women and children with sticks?

  The brawl that followed was short but ugly. The soldiers tore down the benders and tipped over the vardos, smashing crockery and furniture and trampling belongings into the mud. Mostly the women and children were left alone to scream uselessly, but those who tried to defend their battered husbands and fathers were given no quarter. When the soldiers left, the Romani camp at the Old Rose and Crown looked little different to any bombsite in the city.

  Slowly and painfully, and with much bitter weeping, the Roma gathered their scattered belongings and prepared to move on. There were some sidelong glares and mutterings thrown Harry’s way for the trouble that he’d brought on them, mostly from the women who plainly didn’t believe his explanation that Anna must have run off to be with her soldier, but Shiner accepted that he’d been honour-bound to give the man a beating, and that was that.

  They set out in the morning, shuffling through the early mist along the road like refugees, humpbacked with what they could carry and marshalling limping horses and vardos with twisted wheels. There was long debate about where to go next – some argued for further out into the countryside, others for back into the city, but with winter coming on and much repair needed before the children could have decent homes again, it was decided that they would split up: most of the men would find a new
camp and set to fixing things, while the young, old, and injured would seek shelter with their town-dwelling kin.

  So Harry Clayton took his sons and joined the city-bound exodus.

  * * *

  Romani traditions of hospitality meant that everyone had a place to sleep that night, though most found themselves on floors or in cramped and damp Anderson shelters.

  Harry’s sleep was plagued with the voices of trees whispering threats and obscenities at him in Anna’s voice. During the day he wandered around in a foul mood looking for any work to be had, but despite the bomb damage and the need for strong arms to clear the debris and rebuild, there was nothing for the likes of him, he was told. Other Romani were getting work, he saw, but one site foreman after another turned him away. He took himself to a nearby pub with what few pennies were left in his pockets.

  ‘I’ll bear it,’ he muttered into his pint of Ansells. ‘I’ll bear it all, you bitch.’

  That was where his youngest, eight-year-old Dan, found him. ‘Da!’ he yelled, running into the pub. His eyes were wide and his face pale. ‘It’s Toby! A wall’s fell on ’im!’

  They had been hunting for shrapnel, Dan told him as they ran. Maybe someone had leaned against the wall or maybe it was set to fall on its own, but it had come down on him all the same, burying him under the rubble.

  Harry dug his boy out from the bricks, pale with dust and unconscious. He gathered the child in his arms, snarling at the men who tried to help, and lurched through the streets to the house where Mami Rudge was staying with her sister-in-law. Toby was laid in the back bedroom and Harry hovered in a torment of waiting, chewing his nails while the old women in their black shawls busied about his son with cloths and poultices like solicitous crows. Eventually Toby came round, and if it hadn’t been for the presence of womenfolk Harry would have wept with relief.

  Mami took him into the kitchen and forced him to drink a cup of black tea.

  ‘He’ll pull through,’ she said. ‘They bounce, the little ones. Sometimes things bounce off them too.’