In spite of being a rural-looking, wooded clearing on the edge of our tightly crowded London, ‘here’ was a poorer place even than we’d just come from. Not all Gypsies have those colourful covered wagons for which they are rightly famous. Some, like this group, use carts to move from place to place. They live in tents and in an English October that’s a bleak prospect. As we followed Horatio into their camp, those familiar suspicious dark eyes bored into me yet again. However, unlike my encounters with Gypsies in the past, this time was not characterised by any movement or offers of entertainment. They all, men and women, sat around their smoky wood fires crying and, in some cases, raking their fingers down their long, grief-stricken faces until they bled. On the outskirts of the group other people, obviously not Gypsies, watched the scene, baffled.
‘Christ!’ Doris said, as she moved in front of a woman whose face was wet with blood and tears and whose tattered clothes reeked of smoke, damp and leaf mould.
‘Romanies can’t do nothing until the body is buried,’ Horatio explained, as he headed towards a particularly small and mean black canvas tent. ‘No eating, washing, drink just tea and wine and smoke baccy.’
‘So you all do nothing?’ I asked, anxious, I must confess, to learn how they could manage like this.
‘Yes.’
‘But how do you—’
‘We pay the gauje to do most of it,’ Horatio said. ‘And those not of the family, we boil the kettles for the drinks, make the arrangements, get baccy.’
‘We? But you said you’re family to this girl, Horatio.’
‘I’m family in as much as all Romanies is family,’ he replied. ‘I can do things. I can get you . . .’ he pulled the front flap of the tiny, filthy tent to one side revealing the blood-soaked body of a girl and a familiar clergyman ‘. . . and the vicar. Important – man in touch with God should be first to see the dead one. It can calm the muló, the spirit, what can be wild with anger.’
On seeing the state of the corpse, Doris turned aside. The clergyman smiled. ‘Hello, Frank.’
‘Reverend.’
He came out of the tent, straightened, and we shook hands warmly. Ernie Sutton, Anglican priest of St Andrews, Plaistow, had been an early playmate of mine. Many was the time we’d swung together on ropes around lamp-posts as nippers. As the tent flap flopped down after him, Ernie took me to one side and said softly, ‘Rosie Lee, the deceased, died of cancer. At my insistence that chap Horatio got a doctor up here, a fellow called Wright from Leyton. But it’s all quite straightforward.’ He sighed. ‘The girl died naturally . . . if, of course, you can call death natural at her age.’
‘How old is she?’ I asked.
Ernie shrugged. ‘Sixteen, twenty at the most. And before you say anything else, Frank, she was married, in common with most Gypsy girls, and that is her husband over there.’
I looked towards the pond where a tall young man stood sobbing into the wind. At his feet stood a small, perplexed blond child.
‘It doesn’t help that half of Canning Town happens to be camping out here at the moment,’ Ernie said. ‘Gawping away. You’d’ve thought they’d seen enough misery, wouldn’t you?’
Canning Town is one of those manors that abut directly on to the Royal Docks – the Victoria, the Albert and the George. With Silvertown, Custom House and North Woolwich, Canning Town supplies most of the manpower for the docks as well as for Beckton gasworks, the Tate & Lyle sugar factory and lots of other industries beside the Thames. It’s been blasted to bits ever since the raids started in September. The bombed-out can be billeted elsewhere, but to go through all the official processes takes time and a lot of families have ended up in tents out in the forest. In that way, so they say, they can have some control over what happens to them and their nippers. If they let the authorities take care of them, more often than not the poor sods are given billets in the same area they came from, which means they’ll suffer raids every night again and have to go down into tiny damp air-raid shelters. Just thinking about it makes me sweat. If I was bombed out I might very well come out to the forest or the Flats. The police can say what they like about how gangsters and other unsavoury types do their business alongside the decent folk among the trees these days – but in the forest a person is out in the open.
‘Anyway, Frank, are you and Mrs Rosen . . .’ Ernie smiled briefly at Doris ‘. . . going to make a start?’
‘Er . . .’
‘I can bury her on Thursday, if that’s all right with you,’ he continued. ‘The Almighty and Jerry willing, I can do two o’clock in the afternoon.’
I was about to say I’d check my appointments when I got back to the shop but Doris, who knows everything about Hancocks, said that I could do that date and time, so we agreed it with Ernie, and with Horatio when he came over to see what we were about. Rosie’s family, he said, would be content with that.
Once Ernie had gone and Horatio had finished boiling a pan of water for us, Doris and I set to work on Rosie Lee. Someone, probably her husband, had put another set of clothes, which had obviously been the deceased’s Sunday best, beside the body in the tent.
‘Poor little thing,’ Doris said, as she walked gingerly around the body, settling eventually at its head. ‘All that blood!’
‘Mr Sutton said she died of cancer.’ I gazed at the young, if strained, face of the corpse before us – still not visibly at peace: great clots of blood lay like pieces of liver between her thighs. I’ve seen such poor women before. When cancer gets into a woman’s womb it’s a terrible, painful, bloody death. ‘Come on, let’s get her washed as soon as we can.’
Doris, who had never washed, dressed or even touched a dead body before, stuck out a hand for a cloth and said, ‘I’ll wipe her face.’
I let her do what she felt able to while I concentrated on the rest. After all, the Gypsies couldn’t see us and I couldn’t in all conscience put Doris through a full-scale washing of a corpse this bad. Cancer rots from the inside out, so little Rosie was far from wholesome. In a way, I suppose, I was deceiving the bereaved who, I knew, expected Doris to do most of the work, but I didn’t feel bad about it, given the circumstances. In this job you have to treat every corpse and every bereaved family differently – give them what they want, and do what’s best at the same time, if you can. If you can’t, you just have to do whatever’s possible.
After Doris and I had done as much as we could with the water we had, I went outside with the bowl to get some more from Horatio. He was squatting by one of the fires in the middle of the camp, watching the water pot suspended above it with rapt concentration. As I moved towards him I saw that a few of the non-Gypsy gawpers Ernie had pointed out had started to move beyond the edges of the travellers’ camp. The Gypsies seemed not to notice but I did, so I went over.
‘What do you want?’ I asked a particularly large old bloke with anchors tattooed on his forearms.
He frowned. ‘What you doin’ here?’ he said. ‘Ain’t you that undertaker from up Plaistow?’
People sometimes say the East End is like a collection of villages. There’s truth in that, especially if you’re bonkers and Anglo-Indian as I am. Even those who’ve never used our business know about Hancocks. I’m the village idiot.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m here to remove a body from the camp. I think these people want to be left alone to grieve.’
‘There’s coppers about,’ the man said, ignoring me and moving ever more forwards. ‘Military, asking questions, going through things.’
In my experience, Military Police, rather than ordinary coppers, could mean only one thing. ‘They must be hunting down deserters,’ I said, my blood freezing. Back in my war, the Great War, deserters had been shot. I have done it myself. I have stood in a line with other soldiers and shot at boys who only did what the rest of us wanted to do. I can still see myself doing it sometimes, at night, in the dark. It’s not only the bombs I run from when the raids get going. My brain is much more dangerous than any Luftwaffe pilot.
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‘I don’t trust no coppers, military or whatever,’ he said, as he thrust one meaty hand into his jacket pocket and brought out a pipe. ‘I don’t want to answer no questions off of no one. I’ll wait here until they’ve gone.’
‘I’ve just told you these people are—’
‘I won’t make no bother for the Gyppos,’ he said, as he lowered himself to the ground beside Horatio. ‘I ain’t got nothing against them.’
The Gypsy looked at me and nodded, then refilled my bucket from his pot. Not speaking to coppers of whatever kidney is something that East-Enders and Gypsies have in common. Although unspoken, it had been agreed that the man and whoever was with him could stay. It was the start of an association between the Gypsies and the bombed-out that was to have a big impact on all of us in the weeks to come.
When I went back into the tent, Doris said, ‘So, what happens between now and the funeral, Mr H?’
‘Once we’ve got Rosie cleaned up I’m going to put her in that nightgown over there,’ I said, pointing to a threadbare white garment that lay on the ground. ‘We’ll transport her in that.’
‘We not putting her in her best things, then?’
I lowered my voice. ‘I can’t clean her up properly here, Doris. If we put her in a nightdress now, we can take her Sunday best with us and I can put her in it back at the shop.’
‘Yes, but won’t they—’
‘I’ll bring the shell in here in a moment and we’ll put Rosie and the clothes inside,’ I said.
‘Well, Mr H, if you think that’s kosher . . .’
A few minutes later I left the camp with Horatio and went back to the hearse. We took the shell, a flimsy makeshift coffin we use until the right ‘box’ has been made, into the camp and through the flap of Rosie and her husband’s tent. As we passed, carrying the emblem of mortality, all of the Gypsies wailed loudly and the tearing of clothes and faces increased. This group, I noticed, were a mainly short and very dark bunch. There were a few blonds among them – there generally are in a big group – but not many. Few of these had ever bred with the gaujo.
Getting Rosie into the shell wasn’t difficult even if I only had Doris instead of my usual assistants, Walter and Arthur. The poor girl had been so eaten by the cancer there was nothing much left of her. Whether Doris would be able to carry one end of the shell and help me back to the hearse remained to be seen, though. Now that Rosie was inside it, I realised that not even Horatio could help me. However, his new-found gaujo friend with the tattoos was glad to lend a hand and we moved back towards the vehicle with a small woman in tow, her face a mess of scratches.
When we drew level with the car, Horatio nodded at her and said, ‘She’s Rosie’s mother. The dead can’t be alone before they return to the earth. She must sit with her. In your shop.’
‘What? For three days?’ I said.
‘Yes. She’ll not trouble you for food. Just a little tea sometimes and a cigarette,’ Horatio replied. ‘She’s foreign but she speaks some English. She can’t leave her daughter now. Not until the funeral.’
How I would wash Rosie properly and put her clothes on, I didn’t know. The little Gypsy woman climbed into the car with a determined expression on her heavy-featured face.
Doris turned to me and said, ‘So, what now, then, Mr H?’
Chapter Two
Rosie’s mother’s name was something queer and foreign but she said we were to call her Betty. She reckoned she was about the same age as my younger sister Aggie. I, at forty-seven, am the middle in age of my parents’ three children. Aggie is thirty-six and the mother of two nippers, currently evacuated to Essex. Her husband, a right fly-by-night in everyone’s opinion, went off with another woman a long time ago. By contrast, Betty Lee still had her husband who, she said, earned money from the activities of a dancing bear. The whole group were show-people – some of them, like Betty, and Rosie’s husband, Edward, had come originally from Rumania, or so Betty said. There were fortune-tellers, dancers, magicians and basket weavers. All eight of Betty’s remaining children were involved in one way or another.
‘My eldest girl, Lily, she has the Head,’ Betty said to the Duchess one morning, when the latter brought her some tea.
‘The head?’ my mother enquired.
It was two days since I’d brought Rosie and her mother back to the shop with me. Since Betty wouldn’t leave her daughter even when a raid was on, I’d had to tell her I wasn’t finished with Rosie. But she understood and she let Aggie and me wash and dress her daughter, and even watched when the Duchess gently brushed out the girl’s long black hair. Betty had deemed the result ‘beautiful’. She gazed at the corpse from across our little storage room.
‘It’s a great marvel,’ Betty said, her dull eyes seeming to give the lie to such an extravagant statement. ‘It talks, opens its eyes. When Rosie is in the earth you must come and see this great attraction.’
And then the wailing, which the Duchess had grown accustomed to, began again so she and I left Betty alone.
‘Betty reminds me of the mourners I used to see at Hindu funerals,’ my mother said, as we climbed the stairs up to our family’s flat. ‘Christians are so restrained by comparison.’
She wasn’t and isn’t wrong there – although ‘restraint’ isn’t a word I’d have used about any of the funerals I organised, with the exception of paupers’, until this last year. By that I don’t mean that there was a lot of emotion before this war began. That’s not the English way. But there was always a show. There were horses draped in black crêpe pulling the hearse, and mutes carrying huge ostrich-feather wands. Everyone attending was in full mourning and the memorial to the deceased was the biggest the family could afford. Not that many families could afford much, but they’d scrimp and pawn and beg for a funeral. This is a poor borough where generations of men and women have worked themselves to death. For years a slap-up funeral has been the one way that broken-backed dockers and women used up in childbirth can have their brief moment of glory. Now, thanks to Mr Hitler and his mates, that’s changed. With most of the women out at work as well as the men, there’s money for all these things but no time. You have to bury the dead quickly in case of a raid. There are no mutes, few horses and even fewer flowers. There seem to be a lot more tears, though. But when you’ve seen your old dad or your sister or your best friend blown to pieces in front of you it changes things – and people. I know.
When the Duchess, who has very bad arthritis, and I finally made it to the top of the stairs, we went into the kitchen and had our tea with my older sister Nancy. Nancy, or Nan as we call her, is a spinster. Bitter, because she feels the darkness of her skin has put the kibosh on anyone being interested in her for marriage, she spends most of her time looking after the Duchess and saying the rosary.
‘How’s that . . .’ Nan couldn’t think what to call Betty ‘. . . Gyppo?’
‘Tired,’ the Duchess replied, as she sat down and picked up her cup. ‘Keeping vigil is wearisome.’
‘I don’t know why,’ Nan said, as she watched me roll, then light a fag. ‘Ain’t like she’s praying or nothing, is it? Them type don’t have no religion.’
‘Ernie Sutton’s burying the daughter up at the East London,’ I put in, by way of information to my sister.
‘Oh.’
Of course, being buried an Anglican wasn’t and couldn’t be as ‘good’ as if the ceremony had been Catholic but it gave Nan pause, which was no bad thing. At that moment Aggie came bustling in, all perfume and blonde hair rolled up into a great big sausage at the back of her head.
‘Can I have one of your fags, please, Frank?’ she said, as she lifted my tobacco tin off the table in front of me.
‘Well . . .’
‘Ta.’ She laughed. Although her hair is dyed, Aggie has bright blue eyes and baby-fair skin. She works with a gang of other ‘girls’ down at Tate & Lyle’s sugar factory in Silvertown. Although I knew she was about the same age as Betty Lee, Aggie and the Gypsy couldn’t hav
e been more different. For a start Aggie looked ten years younger. Nan, watching her sister roll a cigarette, sniffed ostentatiously. Aggie, who has always taken the view that it is better to attack than be attacked, said to her, ‘I like smoking. Mind your own beeswax.’
‘Agnes . . .’
‘Well, she’s always looking,’ Aggie said to the Duchess, with a shrug. ‘Everything I do she looks at! When I smoke, when I get myself ready to go out for a drink . . .’
‘You haven’t been to Mass.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Aggie said to Nan. ‘I don’t believe in it. And, anyway, Frank don’t go either. My church is called the Green Gate,’ she continued, naming a local pub I knew she went to. ‘Like it or lump it.’
She poured herself a cup of tea and sat down next to me to drink it. A rare silence descended on the Hancock table, only broken by the Duchess, who said, ‘Agnes, you have probably been to more music halls and fairs in recent times than the rest of us.’ Nan snorted but we all, even Aggie, ignored her. ‘Have you ever heard of an attraction called the Head?’
Aggie frowned. ‘The Head? No. What—’
‘Betty says it’s a great marvel. Her eldest daughter has it. She has invited me to go and see it one day.’
‘The Head . . .’
‘Yes. I imagine it is a head on its own, as if separated from its body . . .’
‘Oh, it’s the Egyptian Head you mean,’ Aggie said. ‘I saw it at a magic show on the pier at Brighton before the war. My old man took me.’ She looked down quickly at the floor, then up again almost immediately, smiling.
‘So?’
‘It’s a head of a girl, if I remember rightly, in a box on a table. Opens its eyes and speaks.’ Aggie shuddered at the memory. ‘Creepy.’
I’ve always been interested in how tricks and illusions are done. My earliest experiences of magicians took place in Epping Forest where I watched turns performed by Gypsies and travellers. When I got older I watched magicians at the music halls and the odd end-of-the-pier show or on beanos out to Southend or Brighton. I’ve seen girls sawn in half, men and animals seemingly disappear and even a very good levitation act. But I’d never, at that point, seen a disembodied head. I admit I was intrigued. I’ve always thought that I should be able to work out how such tricks are done, but I’ve always lacked either the time or, since the Great War, the will to do so. After all, when you’ve already gone mad, as we all did in the end out on the Somme, who are you to decide what’s real and what isn’t?
After the Mourning Page 2
