The Sin Within Her Smile

by Jonathan Gash

  The Bentley whispered away like an airship feeling land. I returned, stood watching the river. The Bentley would have been Liffy’s sort. No old Morris Oxfords.

  ‘Know what?’ I told the nags. ‘I get you lot mixed up.’

  ‘Ash is the chestnut,’ Luke said. ‘Pulse is taller, blotchy. Cotton is small. Barley’s black and proud.’

  ‘Don’t they get tired standing up?’

  ‘It’s how they sleep.’ He was amused. Already I’d been amused at twice, and the dawn not here yet.

  ‘What do they have for breakfast? Same old oats?’

  ‘Mmmmh. Humphrey’s getting ours. Eggs, bacon, fried bread, cereals and skimmed milk.’

  When I turned, I had to really look to see him. It was as if the bloke was camouflaged.

  ‘Boris?’ I asked. I felt miserable. ‘He up yet?’

  Luke hesitated. ‘Boris takes his time,’ he said. ‘You’re in charge of Arthur. Phillida must report to the police.’ We walked slowly to the waggons.

  ‘Sunderhill, I’m told by passing strangers. That right?’

  ‘Correct,’ Luke said. ‘A good road, put a good hoof under us.’ ‘Is there really a final destination?’

  He smiled. ‘Bound to be, Lovejoy. Bound to be.’

  Once on the road, I decided to get on the right side of Meg. I thought it would be easy. I talked a reluctant Humphrey into driving Pulse.

  We passed a roadside touristy place. A lady was wearing traditional Welsh costume, tall black stove-pipe hat, apron, wide skirt. She was selling teas and cakes, and those Welsh carved love spoons. I jumped down.

  ‘I’m gasping,’ I told the lady. ‘Like your frock.’

  ‘Ta, bach.' She was laughing. ‘I thought you were more travellers: We’ve had nothing but.’

  ‘That so?’ I would have chatted on but Meg was impatient. I was narked. The stall lady was bonny and knew how to smile.

  We plodded past, me waving from beside Meg and calling to have the kettle on next time. She laughed. ‘Get on with you!’

  ‘Lovely to see Welsh costume, eh?’ Instantly into my ingratiation mode. ‘Have you ever worn it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Clip-clop, clip-clop.

  We were entering mountainous terrain. ‘That a standing stone?’ ‘Indeed.’ A great stone projected from a steep fellside. ‘The eisteddfod. They commemorate it with a stone.’

  ‘Good old Iolo,’ I said, working hard to get my badges back. ‘He must have been a marvellous chap.’

  ‘Iolo Morgannwg,’ Meg said reverently. ‘To speak with him the oldest language of all Europe! It’s not like Yr Iaith Fain, the “thin tongue” that is English, that steals any word it chooses. We can read the Welsh of the Middle Ages like today’s. Who can read Chaucer without a dictionary?’

  ‘True!’ I grovelled. I had to take the reins and pull a bit. ‘Iolo the genius, eh?’

  ‘I’m surprised you know about him, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Me? Oh, Wales has always interested me, love.’ Even if lies come cheap you shouldn’t waste them. I tried to remember the gunge from the library. ‘Stonemason, wasn’t he, from Glamorgan?’ ‘Yes.’ She listened, smiling. It was a pleasant smile, with that hint of sin within. ‘Wasn’t he wonderful? Triumph of resolve over persecution!’

  ‘Indeed, love.’ I grinned. ‘What a lad! Always stoned on laudanum opium!’ I laughed, shaking my head. ‘The biggest hypochondriac ever. Is it true that Dr Johnson gave him the cold shoulder in that London bookshop? Rotten journalist, though.’ ‘Lovejoy,’ Meg said.

  Struggling, I was eager to impress her still more. ‘Daft old coot! I love a faker. All those old manuscripts Iolo forged. When he invented the Gorsedd stones and bards, he just used green and white ribbons tied round your arm.’ I fell about. ‘But he was bright. Never went to school, lucky bloke. Yet he invented the whole fraudulent ritual from a standing start in 1819! His Ma taught him English and Latin.’

  ‘That will do!

  ‘No, love. Hang on.’ I could tell she was choking with laughter. I concentrated, guiding Ash. ‘Ned - his proper name was Edward Williams; he hated it - drank thirty-six cups of tea a day! Fantastic! I wonder if they gave him tincture of opium in Cardiff gaol? Good flautist, though, they say. Hey, Ash!’ The nag pricked up his ears. ‘Iolo would have walked! He wouldn’t ride, from respect for his fellow creatures. Nice chap, eh?’

  ‘ Lovejoy!

  ‘Had a share in a trading ship out of Bristol,’ I coursed on. ‘So what if he was a crackpot? He liked being a grocer and a librarian mostly.’

  She fell on me, clawing and scratching, howling hatred. I flung the reins and leapt off. Luke hauled to a stop and came running back. Boris’s head poked out while I backed, trying to escape this flailing harridan. Luke and Humphrey hauled her off eventually. Boris calmed the horses. Preacher started up, ‘A few more marchings weary ...’ Corinda jumped out applauding. Rita tried to shush us, but Meg was still frothing at the mouth ten minutes later.

  We resumed the journey. I was left to drive the pink caravan, by popular request. Little Arthur got the casting vote by proving that he could scream twice as well as Meg. I was mystified. I mean, I’d given her a true summary of druidical culture and Iolo its inventor. I’d thought she was lapping it up. Can you credit it? Try to please some women with tact, and that’s what you get.

  Whatever they say, driving a horse and cart’s not hard. You hold the reins for the sake of appearances. Beats me why they have driving championships.

  A few village children chucked at us, making my horse, Pulse, shy. I shouted that I’d kill the next little bugger who chucked anything. Except I thought better of it. Some youths in one village threatened to burn us out. I was puzzled. We’d done nowt.

  ‘We don’t want you travvies here,’ one bawled.

  ‘We’re not,’ I shouted back. ‘We’re a mental unit.’

  They roared at that. Not pleasant good-heavens-just-listen merriment, but the howling kind you hear from crowds. A local peeler cycled up, and pedalled slowly alongside until we cleared the village. First time I’ve been glad to see the Plod.

  About an hour after, we were overtaken by a crumbling pantechnicon. It could hardly make the one-in-fifty gradient. Its engine sounded like my old Ruby in a headwind, pistons wheezing, bald tyres whimpering. A couple of goats peered blandly from the tailboard. The great thing managed to groan ahead, tail lights dangling. It was struggling to be an antique, but would never make it. A parrot swung in its cage. The pong of charred cooking and chattering racket was left on the country air. Two women waved. A grinning bloke glittering with alchemic silver and black jewellery on leather made some sign.

  Now there’s travvies, I thought, grinning and waving.

  Travellers of the New Age, travvies, are almost a new phenomenon. Except they’re not. Our old kingdom has always had gypsies. Caravan folk - tinkers, variously Romanies, gyppos, diddicoys, pikers - became partly sedentary over time. Winter, they stay in some housing estate. But come spring, they take to the road, do odd jobs, forage.

  Except the New Age dawned, about 1970. Everybody took sides, and the battle was on.

  The village inhabitant’s view is: instead of a few caravan folk who want to sharpen your kitchen knives, some five hundred people invade in a column of decrepit vehicles. Dogs, cats, maybe a herd or two. They smoke exotic drugs, leave rubbish and stinking night soil. They’re parasites, bleed social security money dry. They block drains, ruin Nature’s ecosystem, pollute streams. Their vehicles would be confiscated by the police if driven by law-abiding residents, but they drive anything they like. They have Mohican haircuts, and leave villages covered in debris, dung, shit and corruption, broken windows. Then they move to the next village, and do the same thing.

  That’s the staid inhabitant’s opinion, unanimous, nemcon.

  The travvies’ own view is different: what’s wrong with freedom, they demand. We have our own chickens, moving where God directs. And everybody gets engine trouble, right? And loyal sub
jects are entitled to welfare, right? Okay, they concede, so there’s

  of us roaming the roads. So what? Mother Nature provides the trees, so why not cut a few down for firewood? The Public Order Act of 1986 is therefore unjust, and brutally oppressive on a peaceful community. And why must everybody live in a semi-detached house with a mortgage, just to please politicians?

  Those are the argument’s two poles. Me, I’m in-between. The ‘decent upstanding taxpayer’ resident barks, ‘It’s not about freedom, it’s about filth!’ and talks of marauding spongers who spread disease, drugs, and destruction. The travvies saying that they have a right to live as they please. They reply, ‘Castlemorton wasn’t our fault...’

  Which is the core of the argument.

  It happened in Wiltshire. Come summer, travvies gather at off- the-cuff festivals, the renowned, feared ‘fezzies’. The police blocked off some roads in Avon. The roadies teemed over the hill - into Castlemorton. Now Castlemorton, if you’ve never been there, is a quiet postcardy place. Good history, nice people, bonny site - until battalion after regiment after columns of vehicles and 20,000 travvies wedged into the town centre. Anybody wanting quotes for their news service got them free. ‘Like the Goths and Vandals ...’ etc., headed the list. ‘Lawless depravity’ came next, then ‘The Govemment/police/army/council, etc., ought to X or Y or Z ...’ where those letters meant any sort of punishment you wanted to inflict. This, note, in peaceful old Albion.

  Reconciling liberty and obligation is hard. For me, it isn’t so much the travvies or their lingering traces of flower power. It’s the phoney element. I was telling Phillida, who came to sit by me.

  ‘The Old Bill - police - say that the ravers actually aren’t travellers at all. Just middle-class druggies on Ecstasy. They hold deafening rave parties days on end. Then they go home. They even have private newspapers.’

  ‘Don’t the local authorities make them turn their transistors down?’ asked this lovely innocent with spirit.

  ‘Mmmh,’ I mused. As bad as Dolly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ I expect the one police constable, gazing bewildered at the mobile nation-tribe hadn’t thought of it either.

  Phillida added, ‘Incidentally. Does Boris’s face seem familiar?’ ‘Dunno,’ I said casually. ‘He’s from your, er, unit.’

  She thought. ‘No. Actually, I think Humphrey’s face is familiar, too.’

  ‘Mmmh?’ I said. ‘Dunno.’ The moral was to stop thinking. Phillida was pleasant. I let her drive a bit while I held Arthur. We sang, but the weather turned cold and she took him inside. We came to a row of country cottages, so I called out to Luke. We paused, and I knocked to ask for some milk. Three doors, before one opened.

  An elderly lady sold me a pint of sterilized. I got invited in for a cup of tea. I could sense Luke fuming with impatience, but you have to be friendly. I sat and talked about old times. I heard that a family four doors down had some silhouettes on their mantelpiece.

  ‘Little cutouts?’ I exclaimed. ‘My Gran did those!’

  ‘On dark red,’ she said. My heart leapt. ‘One is lemon coloured. But very old. They’re dated, Emlyn was telling me.’

  Giddy with desire, I knew the date would be between Victoria and George III. Coloured backgrounds are rare, though silhouettes are common. They’ve got to be, because silhouettes were made by travelling artists right up to modern times. Every country market had its own silhouette cutter. Look for coloured (not white) backgrounds, silhouettes on glass, signed/dated works, different tones - ftair ana clothes in colour, or done on ivory. My favourites are Sarah Harrington’s. She was a travelling silhouette cutter who carried a portable cutting machine (half-a-crown a likeness, and cheap at the price). I took the neighbour’s name, said I’d be coming back this way. I’d pay plenty.

  Luke was impatient when I returned. I got told off, not to leave the caravan on any pretext whatsoever. I smarted under the criticism, waved to the old dear. I was narked. What’s wrong with trying to help people? I’d paid her an interesting visit, and brought little Arthur some milk. I’d been superb value. It only goes to show that people don’t appreciate helpful folk like me.

  When we stopped at noon, I went to an inn and used their phone. I couldn’t get Tinker but got Dolly third try. She was breathless, thrilled. After reassuring her that my socks were aired, that the caravan central heating/air conditioning were superb, I got down to it.

  ‘Love,’ I said, ‘I had to hear you. Any message?’

  ‘Shhh!’ She was at the hospice library. ‘Yes. Mr. Dill. May I read from notes?’ She sounded standing at a lectern. ‘Mr. Corran questioned one Dashboard about one Liffy. Did you get that?’ I said yes. She conversed briefly with somebody about a book. ‘Are you still there, Lovejoy? Some collectors from Hawksley called twice about a frog’s teddy bear ...’ Her voice went doubtful. Paper crinkled. ‘I didn’t have my spectacles. I couldn’t possibly accept his note, so unutterably grimy - ’

  ‘Dolly, love. The rest?’

  She read painstakingly, ‘Sty’s meadow vanished - can that be right? And no news of a glass pot. Finally, your Flint painting of bints washing is a problem. Does it make sense?’

  ‘Dolly,’ I said, ‘I love you. I’ll ring again.’

  The weather improving, we all took the air. Nosh was soup and sandwiches. The sleepy old lady I called Duchess, the only person I’ve ever seen who looked like one. Old Mr. Floyd, his fingers pill- rolling and shaky, was listening to Preacher’s noon hymn ‘Follow On!’ and mouthing along, ‘Down in the valley with my Saviour I would go ...’ Corinda was dancing a voluptuous tambourine flamenco while a distrait Meg tried to make her keep her blouse on.

  Boris was in hiding, Humphrey in huge sunglasses. Rita looked fed up. I sighed. Normally I’m used to a better class of riot. I fed Arthur, and thought.

  Russell Flint was hated by art critics for ‘sugary’ paintings. The trouble is, the public love them. Unscrupulous forgers, who know that this genius mostly used five hues on 300-pound-weight paper, can make a fortune. Art critics everywhere praise him now he’s dead. The ‘glass pot’ presumably meant Simon Doussy’s Swedish glass. Useful, knowing it had vanished. Sty gone?

  The teddy bear collectors. This mob of obsessionals had lately been tormented by rumour. Nowadays, when a single old teddy can command the price of a house, it’s not surprising that the most famous teddy bear of them all is priceless. It’s the one from the Titanic. This tiny little scrawny toy is every antique dealer’s dream. It’s known as the Gatti Bear, from its owner Luigi Gatti. He was caterer in the Titanic's First Class & la carte. His little lad Vittorio gave him the teddy. You can hold the tiny thing in one hand. It’s a Gebruder Bing toy, German. It survived the icy waters of the Atlantic, was returned to the bereaved Gattis in London, and miraculously survived a direct hit in the Blitz. It’s in Ribchester Museum of Childhood.

  A year ago, a desperate yokel claimed he’d nicked the Gatti Bear, and would sell it in the White Hart. Well, it was like a football crowd. I couldn’t get near the place for arctophiles, teddy bear collectors. Merrythought’s of Shropshire make replicas. Every so often the rumour of the real Gatti Bear’s theft circulates. Quite false. For me, I can’t stand the merchant freighter Californian steaming blithely on even though Captain Lord’s crew, rotten sods, actually saw the Titanic's distress flares from only twenty miles off as the poor folk sank beneath the cold waters.

  ‘Eh?’

  Phillida had interrupted. She was smiling. ‘I said it’s an interesting story, Lovejoy. I think you spread that rumour about the valuable teddy bear.’

  The next few minutes were spent in establishing my honesty, and are therefore superfluous.

  Two hours after what should have been teatime, we stopped in pouring rain. I was hungry as hell. Little Arthur was asleep with Phillida, the lucky little sod. Meg was furious, Rita weepy, Humphrey depressed, Boris invisible, Mr. Lloyd staring, up-and-down Corinda was somnolent in profound gloom, the Duchess wet through, and everybod
y too miserable to care. The horses looked bedraggled. Preacher was silent.

  We were in a farmyard plagued by cats. I went to give the Duchess a toffee I’d nicked from Phillida’s theft bag. The Duchess was sitting on the caravan floor when I knocked. Corinda was sitting on a bunk looking at the rain.

  ‘Wotcher, love,’ I told Corinda. I’d never seen her fully dressed before. ‘Toffee, Duchess?’

  A puddle of fluid trickled from the Duchess. I sighed, called for Meg. She came with ill grace. I did the lifting, she the changing. When the old lady was dry I took the soiled clothes and put them in an earthenware pot I found in the farmyard, filled it with rain water. I borrowed some washing powder and hot water from the farmer’s wife, a pleasant, dark-haired bird. She said I could hang the Duchess’s clothes up in the barn. It was hanging the sodden clothes up that I felt odd, and came upon a shallow bowl underneath an enormous plant pot. I pulled it out.

  The Duchess was alone when I went back. Luke and Meg were preparing grub. I could smell it, unappetizing.

  ‘Dry in a trice, Duchess, all right?’ She made no response. I think they listen. It’s not their fault they can’t show willing. ‘Into the changeable weather, eh? My old Gran used to say, With the help of the Almighty and a few policemen!’ I laughed. She said nothing. I leant closer. ‘Duchess. We’ve made a find.’

  From where I was sitting, under the eaves, I could see Meg take

  some stuff into the farmhouse. Luke was in the blue caravan. I saw Boris talking animatedly as they got the paraffin stove going. I thought of him in Royal Navy uniform.

  ‘We’re a rum lot, eh, Duchess?’ I bit a piece of toffee off and fed it to her. She sucked. ‘Duchess?’ I lowered my voice. ‘We’ve found a Nantgarw! Don’t tell, okay? This is between you, me, and baby Arthur. Split three ways.’ No answer. ‘Nantgarw porcelain’s superb. But,’ I added hastily, ‘don’t take sides. If Billingsley did nick the Swansea pottery’s methods, it’s their business, not ours.’

  Arthur bellowed his imperious bellow. I told the Duchess back in a sec, and raced across. I made Arthur’s naff milk feed up, and raced us to the Duchess, breathless. ‘Here, love. Feed him while I plot.’