A Pocketful of Rye

by Anthony Masters

  Later that day, when the fear and its aftermath had subsided, guilt returned. She ought to call the doctor—a hospital—perhaps a priest. They were ill—and the filth of the house was proof. Then—through her front window—she saw the two ladies. Incredulously she stared out. Bella and Anastasia were in the front garden with arms linked, an extraordinary and macabre sight. From her vantage point Amelia could see Anastasia’s face, and although it was pallid she seemed to have the same majesty and attraction as she had seen during her visit and then glimpsed over the last few years.

  Slowly Anastasia bent down and removed two bunches of lavender, complete with roots, from the flower-bed outside the front door that Amelia had come through so quickly in the early hours of the morning. They are mad, thought Amelia, picking lavender in November. Then the conscious thought came to her that she was spinsterly peeking through lace curtains to see what the next-door neighbours were doing. The thought considerably upset her and she retired upstairs to have a brisk spring clean of her bedroom. This produced a feeling of normality, and over a frugal lunch she reconsidered any action her conscience provoked her to take.

  Amelia firmly decided that no action should be taken—after all it could well be that the old ladies were living in the upper storey, having abandoned the lower half of the house as too much to keep up. They had left the lights on and the front door open all night because they were both elderly and absent-minded. Their eccentricities over the lavender gathering in November could well be put down to—well, it seemed harmless enough. As for the sobbing—Amelia made another Decision: she would say Nothing. Nevertheless she had been quite right to investgate and would keep a close scrutiny on the ladies for some time to come. Decision made, Amelia compressed her lips, nodded to herself and fell asleep.

  Another five years passed, the grey house remained undecorated whilst Amelia had entirely repainted the inside of her house and had paid a large sum to have the outside repainted in its familiar yellow and black colours. The ladies next door seemed even more retiring and Amelia saw them more rarely in the garden. Every time she saw them Anastasia seemed to lean a little more heavily on her sister’s crooked shoulder, but they both appeared quite content. Anastasia looked as dominating as ever and Bella the same companion-servant. Tradesmen still delivered the essentials and were dealt with by Bella. They received no letters, except circulars, and no visitors. Amelia, intent on her own schemes, ceased to be interested in them and had almost forgotten her experience five years ago in the grey house. The smell of lavender brought it back occasionally, mingled with memories of the unpleasant perfume. Then—one morning Amelia received a letter from Bella, written in a spidery hand, asking her if she would join them both for four o’clock tea the next day.

  Amelia’s first impulse was to refuse the invitation as memories of the horror of that early morning came flooding back. But they were dulled and the letter was so ordinary—Amelia began to methodically pick up the scattered books, the deck chair and the other accessories to her evening’s gardening.

  Her throat was parched so she went indoors to have a lemonade. As she passed her writing desk she made a Decision. Sealing up the envelope of her acceptance, she hurried to the front door of the grey house and slipped it in. With a sigh of near relief she went back to her own trim house and closed the door.

  Amelia arrived on the stroke of four and knocked a little nervously. With uncanny familiarity the shawl-covered figure opened the door and stood back. Amelia was reminded instantly of the first visit she had made to the house. She hesitated—it was all so strangely familiar. She peered through the gloom at the misshapen figure, who seemed hardly to have changed since that first visit. A little more wizened, a little more grotesque—and the same lolling mouth.

  “Good afternoon—how are you?” faltered Amelia.

  Bella mouthed at her and closed the door.

  “How is your sister? Quite well, I hope?”

  Bella mouthed something unintelligible, and to Amelia’s distress came close and looked at her face searchingly, as if she hoped to find a special expression on it or some quality beneath it. Then, to Amelia’s relief, she retreated and beckoned to her to follow. Amelia thought she would lead the way upstairs, where obviously the two ladies were now living. Surely they could not be going into the devastated drawing-room again. With alarm Amelia recalled the memories of that early morning five years ago. The hall and passage seemed filthy and she was sure that—They came to the drawing-room door and Bella knocked, calling out something incomprehensible. There was no sound from inside. Amelia glanced at Bella—she had never noticed her clothes before—but surely this afternoon there was something strange about them. She suddenly saw what it was—the cripple’s clothes were far too big for her and appeared amazingly grotesque. She seemed to be wearing something that looked as if it had once been a ball gown. It was of a heavy velvet—and indeed looked too heavy to rest on the cripple’s twisted shoulders. She noticed lavender in grubby vases on various tables in the gloomy passage. And with the smell of it—and with a shock Amelia realised that it seemed to come from Bella—the cheap obnoxious perfume she associated with her fear of that early morning.

  Once again Amelia seemed hypnotised by an unreasoned gripping horror—she tried to shake it off and thought instead of Anastasia’s dominating, powerful majesty. She needed to see Anastasia now and feel the strength—Bella opened the door and Amelia stood immovable on the threshold. The room had been completely restored. It was exactly as she remembered it and a feeling of warm calm came over her. Whatever had happened that morning was all right now; every polished surface twinkled reassuringly at her. She looked eagerly for Anastasia.

  Later, Amelia had only a hazy recollection of what she did. When she collapsed inside her own front door she knew she dialled a number on the hated and seldom used telephone, and soon the privacy and peace of her end of the road was shattered by bells and cars—As to what had happened in the drawing-room at the grey house, that was even more of a hazy memory. Patient questioning and sedatives revealed little but wild hysterical outbursts about the smell of lavender and how she, Amelia, could never bear to have it near her for the rest of her days. In a week she was less hysterical and in a fortnight she seemed to be her old self again—almost.

  Some weeks later, late on an October afternoon, Amelia busied herself in the garden. She felt that at least the horror of the situation had gone, having been replaced by compassion.

  Vague but terrible memories floated back to her as she thought of Bella’s obscenely oversize dress, and then with a tremor she remembered the cripple continuously sorting through the second-hand finery on the counters in the derelict shop, and clasping an outdated lady’s travelling cloak, cocktail dresses, gowns and moth-eaten furs to her misformed body. Amelia tenderly thought of Bella’s insanity. The incessant, childlike ‘dressing up’ and the continual parading in front of every available mirror, dressed so grotesquely in the remnants and cast-offs of every strata of society. Then the tragic but wonderful dreams—visions of imagined grace and beauty—and a continual devastating madness to keep the images alive. Then perhaps, dressed in finery that she thought even her sister could never emulate, she paraded through the house, reeking of the cheap perfume that Amelia had sensed so often. And then perhaps Bella would stop in front of a mirror and in a moment of sanity see her broken body and the ill-fitting clothes, and would sob until Anastasia came to comfort her as she undoubtedly would. Possibly it was this that brought Anastasia to a level that was impossible to escape.

  Bella, with the collapse of Anastasia, became quite abnormal, and it seemed amazing to Amelia that she had ever presented a normal face to the tradesmen. But she went into a shell of sanity, cloaked in her misshapen limbs, and they accepted her. She must have had lucid moments to eat and keep her ailing sister alive. If only—if only, thought Amelia, I had done something five years ago—I made a Decision—and it was wrong.

  Bella had slavishly restored the drawing-r
oom with her sanity quietly slipping away. She thought, pathetically, that Anastasia would be restored to normal health if she had back, in its original state of perfection, her drawing-room. And tea at four—and Amelia herself as the visitor. Bella in her lucid madness had thought that this—and only this—routine of tea and the drawing-room at four could help Anastasia. But by then nothing on earth could help Anastasia. Amelia remembered with only a great sadness the terrible sight that had caused her to run screaming hysterically from the grey house, accost a complete stranger, and fall sobbing and inarticulate with fear at his feet.

  When Amelia had looked for Anastasia’s domination of the drawing-room, she saw only too quickly the horror that had been so well concealed. As the French clock sweetly chimed the hour Amelia had watched the hideous caricature that clucked and giggled, slobbered and opened its mouth to say:

  “As you can see, I can only afford to spoil myself with my drawing-room,” and then it dissolved into a gobbling, chuckling mutter whilst behind Amelia Bella began to laugh and mouth excitedly. Petrified with terror Amelia gazed at what had been the majesty of Anastasia and what was now a simpleton, sitting drooling with hands never ceasing to pluck at her vomit-stained blouse. She was filthy from head to foot and no sound came from her parted lips as she threw her head backwards and forwards as if she were appreciating some immense private joke. Then Amelia looked from one to the other, from Anastasia to Bella, and their piercing blue eyes were quite, quite mad.

  The grey house was tenanted again and was grey no longer. It had been painted a deep lustrous white, and the laurel hedge had been cut back and an open garden laid out. The creeper had also been cut down, and on the left wing of the house the derelict shop had been cleared of its contents and been turned into a conservatory.

  Next door—in contrast—was a little black-and-yellow house. There was a trim garden with begonias, a crazy paving, a black-and-yellow rain barrel, and black-and-yellow tubs full of flowering shrubs. At the windows of the house were lace curtains, and behind one of them was an antique spinning wheel.

  As the late autumn sun flooded the front gardens of both houses, there could not be seen in either front bed one bush or even one twig of lavender.

  “My Mother Said that I never Should …”

  The morning was gold-crested. Each break in the mist flooded the dew-stiff grass with a ray of light that warmed and dazzled. Eric ran to wherever he could see the sun burst through and stood to bask for a second in the fleeting, sudden heat. For half an hour he chased the sun shafts over the hazy early morning common. Gradually the backcloth of the squat gasometers broke through, swathed in strands of muslin that became dirty grey and almost invisible as the mist began to rise. These precious early morning moments of sun-flecked cloud and promise were over too soon—too abruptly, giving way to the grey sky and monotony of the surrounds. Eric knew that these moments were precious and elusive and that he must reach Damien before the experience was over. He began to run towards the caravans…

  The morning was dusted with silver—charged with expectation of the new day, and the dew soaked into his shoes. It was a wonderful feeling—a feeling that would last for perhaps half an hour. Damien ran as fast as he could towards each sun-drenched spot, racing the clouds that threatened to obscure the warmth. When he beat the overriding sky he would leap into the midst of the fleeting heat, shouting excitedly as he felt his shoulders enveloped in the luxurious, temporary glow. When the clouds hid the sun before he could overtake them he almost groaned aloud in disappointment. The chimneys and pylons loomed against the rising skyline, lit for a golden moment by a sun-shower catching rusty railing or tarnished gantry. As the morning grew a little older and the mist began to lift, he could see a little more of the common each moment. As more and more open ground evolved before him he wanted to run to the short horizon, and shout and laugh and sing. He wanted to be with Eric, to share it with him, to catch hold of the morning and drag it down around his shoulders and have this glinting, sun-starred morning to himself—and to have Eric in the midst of it. They would play—and play until the sun would break through, harnessed to their own private patch of morning light. He began to run towards the houses at the edge of the common.

  Carlotta, spoon in hand, wolfed spongy breakfast cereal, and bit deeply into bread and margarine. To her, the early morning sequences of mist and sunshine were to be avoided. She had shivered as she stepped into the chill of the air outside the caravan. Quickly she had stepped back inside, closed the door and bent gladly over the fug of the stove. The interior of the wagon glowed cosily, and her old red dressing-gown was wrapped firmly about her. Wiping the condensation from the tiny window, she peered out, hunching her shoulders in delight as the warmth from the stove suffused her. Carlotta loved to watch the common through the window in the early morning—and loved to turn back to the comfortable stuffiness of the tiny, cluttered space she lived in. Particularly she had liked the wild March days, with the wind buffeting the caravan from outside until each tormented rivet and board cried aloud in protest. Inside the warmth surrounded her and breakfast was eaten slowly in the snug chair by the roasting stove. From the window she could see the broken pattern of factories and railway sidings, their day beginning with clatter and belching streams of smoke. In the foreground the tents and sideshows stood bleak and forlorn, the Big Wheel and the Caterpillar silent, useless, incongruous without their lights and the metallic blast of their music. The ground was broken and the grass trodden, but over the garish paint-work dew had formed in a sheen of suspended droplets and near frozen moisture. There were spiders’ webs delicately spanning the cross-beams and struts of the stands, shuddering in the wind. They strained but never broke and when the erratic sun caught them they gleamed in a golden aura of delicately woven splendour. The roundabout was frozen and sudden unpredictable sunbeams caught the tawdry lacquer of their wooden manes, flashing and scoring these inanimate scrolls in a rippling, cavorting, almost caressing embrace. Then the two boys ran out of the receding mist, and began to climb the steps of the caravan. Carlotta, with a quick eager movement, opened the door.

  “I bet you five shillings your Granny isn’t the Romany Queen.”

  “Bet you ten shillings she is.”

  “I bet you fifteen shillings she isn’t.”

  “I bet you five pounds she is.”

  “You haven’t got it to bet with.”

  “I have.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “Have.”

  “Haven’t.”

  Damien fell on Eric, and they wrestled happily on the grass. After a while they resumed the debate. Above them the sun shone delicately from a sky strewn with hurtling clouds. It was a fast racing Spring sky, rushing towards an ultimate goal of untroubled blue. Meanwhile it flurried and, beset with movement, it dashed the clouds over the face of the sun, momentarily obscuring the orb, leaving only an orange insubstant shadow visible behind the veil.

  It was early afternoon, Saturday, and a few people circled the Fairground. Eric lay and stared up at the concealed sun.

  “My mother said that I never should

  Play with the Gipsies in the Wood,”

  he recited in a mawkish voice. “I don’t know why I play with you, you’re only a dirty old gipsy,” he added pleasantly—“Nothing but a dirty old gipsy.”

  “I’m not, I’m a Romany,” shouted Damien above the din.

  “Nothing but a dirty old gipsy,” Eric chanted monotonously, oblivious of Damien’s claims.

  Idly Eric sat on Damien’s chest, punching him and continuing to chant, “Nothing but a dirty old gipsy.” After a while he became bored with this recitation and they began to fight contentedly.

  Suddenly Eric sat up, and pushing Damien off him, said, “Do you really think that Carlotta is Queen of the Gipsies?”

  “No,” replied Damien grandly, “She’s Queen of the Romanies—that’s rather different. It means she’s a real Queen of—of a real people.” He spoke condescendingly,
from a great height, as if trying to strike Eric’s mentality.

  “Then why doesn’t she live in a palace?” Eric asked lazily, his interest waning.

  “Because she’s too poor.”

  “Queens aren’t poor,” scoffed Eric, “Queens are always rich.”

  “This one isn’t,” said Damien firmly—“All Romany Queens are poor.”

  “Why?” asked Eric.

  “Because they are,” returned Damien. And that was the end of it.

  Gradually the lights came on—they glowed uncertainly in the twilight, dim and insubstant low-powered bulbs that threatened to fade away altogether in the half light of the remaining sky. The music churned in the background, and the smell of hot dogs wafted through the air. Eric and Damien drank the scene in, their ten-year-old eyes gazing deep into the brash arena of lights and music. They sat side by side on Carlotta’s steps, hugging their knees, utterly abstracted. In appearance they contrasted almost completely—Damien was tall, with a shock of dark, unruly hair. His hands were long, elegant and tapering. His skin was dark but greasy—a gipsy in looks and manner. Unexpectedly, his eyes were slate grey and his long, dark lashes made a strange contrast with them. The eyes moved slowly, dwelling lovingly on the scene around him. There almost seemed to be a film over their soft grey surface, and the pupils were indistinct and subdued. In manner, Damien was rowdy and boisterous. He had an intensity for life that burned and smouldered constantly. He was quick to sulk, and quick to regain his good temper. He waged a constant war against discipline and uniformity, and as there was increasingly little in his life, he was frustrated by lack of opposition. In certain moods he would tease Eric by the hour, until Damien’s barbed, careless tongue would bring his friend to tears. Then Damien, full of shame, would contritely make amends. The rest of the time they would play, push, punch and wrestle and watch the mysterious antics of the inexplicable adult world around them.