The Wanderers

by Tim Pears

  *

  At the beginning of April they reached Okehampton. ‘The Hicks will be there, Leo,’ Samson told the boy. ‘We’ll have a good rokker for sure.’ He repeated that the Hicks were members of their tribe. They would meet them where they always did, away from the town. ‘There’s a little lonely, out-of-the-way place. I don’t even know how the Good Lord found it before he put his plants and trees there.’

  Leo laughed. He told Samson that he was learning to like their way of life. He could see it had advantages over the one he had grown up in.

  The lane was a crooked dead-end track with high hedges either side and a large space at the end, and the Hicks were encamped already. Rhoda and the other women rushed forward to greet their brethren. Children followed, the men after them. The boy helped Gully stake out the ponies. ‘Do you see that, Leo?’ the old man asked. ‘By yonder tree? You see a white horse in the morning, you’ll have good luck all day.’

  The boy had already seen the horse. It was all he saw, for he knew it, of that he was certain. It was the colt he had ridden for Lord Prideaux one year before at Bampton Fair. A horse he had ridden and known what speed is. A horse that flew like the wind.

  Through the afternoon the gypsies set up their tents and campfires. Leo gathered wood and collected water. Gully intended to sell some of his ponies and these Leo brushed down and groomed. Gully fed them chaff as he did not usually do. He took his wife Caraline’s block of salt and scraped a handful into each bowl and mixed it, and he tethered each animal within reach of the stream that ran between their camping ground and the high hedge. Beyond the hedge lay a field the farmer let them use for the duration of their stay, in return for Rhoda telling the fortunes of his wife and all her family. Gully planned also, he said, to sell an old Suffolk Punch. He’d bought it for chicken feed yet the farmer who sold it could not hide his glee. Leo was not surprised. He wondered who on earth now would pay one penny for such a nag.

  ‘When a gentile buys a poor horse,’ Gully told him, ‘he shouts blue murder. Me, I’ll keep my mouth shut, and pass it on to another fool.’ He grinned. ‘One such as I,’ he added.

  Leo groomed this carthorse as he had his father’s Shires. Gully looked over periodically from his own labours to watch. The horse stood dumb and grateful and perhaps, it seemed, a bit surprised for she was not used to such tender treatment. When Leo had brushed the horse’s tail and was washing the implements he had used, Gully came to him and said that it had not been unknown for a gentile to become a member of a gypsy tribe. There was a ritual.

  The old man wished to share some arcane knowledge. Leo asked Gully to tell him of this ritual. Gully said he could not remember it in detail. He shook his head. Perhaps to loosen some mechanism inside. ‘The chief of the tribe, my brother Samson, or his wife Kinity, they’d slit your arm for you and mingle your blood with two or three of us. Such as myself and George and Henery, do you see?’ He lifted his floppy hat and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You’d need to fast some days.’

  ‘I believe a person could do that,’ Leo told him. ‘It is not pleasant but it is possible.’

  ‘You’d still be an outsider, though.’

  Leo understood that Gully was addressing him directly.

  ‘Until you married a gypsy girl. Some girl like Keziah.’ The old man put his hat back on and smiled. ‘And there’d be a task or two before you could get near to that.’

  Leo’s lips moved. ‘A task?’ How could he tell Gully that this was the last thing he wanted.

  ‘Aye. Set by the girl’s father. George.’ Gully considered what he had said. He pondered what he might say next. Then he nodded. ‘If the task was of my choosin, Leo, you’d need to steal a horse before you could have any daughter a mine.’

  In the evening when all had fed, Henery told Leo that there would be a trip to a certain public house forthwith, for the purchase and consumption of alcohol. ‘You should come along with us, Leo, I’ll see you get a bottle a pop or two.’

  They walked back along the lane and on to the outskirts of the town. All came, every member of the Orchards and of the Hicks, and soon were strung out. The men strode forward, their thirsty women matching them. The old men and women and the young ones such as Augusta, carrying their babies in their shawls or dragging dawdling toddlers, fell behind, like some tribe wandering in the wilderness. Had the gypsies done something to kindle the anger of the Lord or had they chosen to live the way they did? Leo did not know.

  The public house was empty as if cleared for this jocular influx. They crowded into the bar. Most ordered beer but Kinity demanded a mixture of claret and whisky, which she said she savoured as had the poor old lady herself – and hadn’t she lived over eighty years, most of them on the throne, and many alone?

  Samson raised his mug of beer. All were quiet and he said, ‘Here’s to thy health, you Hicks, may you live until a walnut shell will make a coffin for you, every man, woman and child.’

  They cheered Samson Orchard, then the Hicks’s chief stood and raised his mug and said, ‘Thank you, Samson. And here’s to prosperity for my wife’s husband.’ There was silence for a moment, then much laughter. In the midst of it Leo heard someone say, ‘Nippers outside,’ and found himself bundled out.

  The gypsy children milled about. Some were brought a drink by older kin. Leo was not. They found things to do to impress one another. One Hicks boy could throw a stone an unlikely distance. Others tried to match him but could not. A girl sang a song at a higher pitch than anyone else could equal. Each time the door to the house opened the noise in the bar, of raucous talk and laughter, escaped with a roar. Then the door opened and Gully came out, and Leo ran after him and walked back to the encampment beside him.

  ‘I saw you through the glaze,’ Gully told him. ‘Stood there on your own.’ They walked back in the cool darkness. ‘I’m not one for the crowds, boy,’ the old man said. ‘My Caraline’s happy as a sandpiper with the rokker back there. It’s too loud for me.’ He stopped and looked up at the stars in the black sky. ‘I just have to get the noise out a my ears.’ They walked slowly on. ‘They say a gentile’s ear is so full a noise in the towns, Leo, that when he’s in the forest he can’t hear the trees speakin.’

  The boy asked him if the family had ever been, or were likely to go, to a town by the name of Penzance.

  ‘I heard of it,’ Gully admitted. ‘Way down in Cornwall. We don’t go there and we never have done. We’re Devon gypsies.’

  When they reached the camp Leo went directly to the white colt. The old man came with him for Leo wished to introduce Gully to the beast. There could be no doubt this was the one the Hicks had brought for the race. The horse was tethered close to a hedge. His silvery form stood out in the moonlight. Leo spoke to him. ‘Tis good to see you again, my friend,’ he said. ‘I never expected it. That was some ride you give me.’ He blew into the horse’s nostrils and stroked him and inhaled his lovely tart smell. The colt stood perfectly still, poised, attentive to the boy. Leo knew the horse could not remember him. It was not possible. Yet did he? Did each know the other? Then he told Gully what a horse this was, for his size the swiftest Leo had seen or could imagine.

  ‘He is a fine beast,’ the old man said. ‘I can see that, even in the darkness.’

  Another man’s voice spoke from behind them. ‘It’s you, ain’t it?’ Gully turned to acknowledge this member of the Hicks family, but he was facing Leo. ‘I thought it were. Yes, and I were right, weren’t I? I knew twas you.’ He turned to Gully. ‘Have you seen this nipper ride? You must have. Why else would you bring a gentile among us?’

  It was the lad who had been riding the colt at Bampton Fair, who on Lord Prideaux’s orders gave way to Leo. The man and lad and boy looked at each other in the pale moonlight. It was not possible to make out the expressive features of each other’s faces, it was like looking through a veil of milk. But the lad could see enough.

  ‘You’ve not, have you?’ he asked Gully. ‘You don’t know what we ha
ve with us here? I thought I could ride, Gully, but this nipper can ride.’

  ‘You still haven’t sold him then?’ Leo asked the Hicks lad.

  The lad laughed. ‘He tells jokes as well,’ he said. ‘A course I sold him. I’ve sold him near enough a dozen times now. He will keep makin his way back to me, though, won’t he?’

  *

  In the morning at first light the boy went back to the horse. He spoke to him quietly as he ran his hand over the colt’s body, pausing at the joints, checking for any swellings or lumps. He found none. The horse became still under the boy’s fingers. He felt under his palm the pulse of the veins between the animal’s skin and flesh beneath. So far as Leo could tell there was nothing wrong with this horse anywhere in his conformation. He stepped back and beheld him. He figured the colt to be full-grown now, and wondered at his parentage. He was not tall as a racehorse or a big hunter. He was thick-boned, and strong, yet possessed a certain elegance, though perhaps that came only from Leo knowing the speed of which he was capable. Perhaps this colt was the miraculous white offspring of a gypsy horse and a thoroughbred of some kind. It was a mystery the depth of which he had not the knowledge to fathom.

  Leo made his way back to the Orchards’ vardos. The mood in the camp was subdued. Many slept, for they had not done so all night, coming back from the pub and drinking more and telling stories around the campfires. Those who emerged from their benders were grim, scowling. Leo thought it must be the alcohol, but Gully said there was more to it. ‘The Penfolds are here, the bastards. Okehampton is ours, always has been. They know that. They’re lookin for trouble and they’ll find it soon enough.’

  Leo asked who the Penfolds were. The old man explained that they were related to the Orchards and the Hicks, not to mention the Isaacs and the Smalls. All were once of the same tribe, but the Penfolds had broken away. He could not, he admitted, remember why, his brother might, but it was a terrible thing for sure, whatever it was. A grievous offence.

  ‘They follows us around like fuckin cuckoos,’ Gully said, unusually vehement. ‘We get glimpses a their ugly mugs, but they’ve never come out like this. Samson will be thinkin hard on it, Leo, thinkin hard.’

  *

  That afternoon Gully told the boy he wished to show him something. They walked down the curved, sloping way into the town. There were many people, on the pavement and the road. Gully said it was so busy on account of the Fair taking place tomorrow. He entered the shop of James Wright, ironmonger. Out front were baskets, brushes, buckets, brooms. The boy followed him inside. Receptacles of zinc, tin, copper, hung from hooks on the ceiling joists. There were shelves of nails and screws of every sort and size. A back room full of tools. Gully bought eight twelve-bore shotgun cartridges and a pint of linseed oil.

  Back at the waggon Gully extracted the black shot powder from the cartridges and mixed it in the oil. Leo fetched the old Suffolk Punch out of the field. He did not believe that anyone would buy her. She was on her last legs. When he brought her back Gully had uncoiled a length of rubber tubing. Leo held the horse and Gully fed one end of the tube up her left nostril. ‘You has to get it down the gullet,’ he said. ‘Not the windpipe. If I put the tube down her trachea and then the oil into her lungs, I could kill her. Drown her.’ He continued to feed the tube up the carthorse’s nostril. She remained calm, as if this strange procedure were an everyday ritual, some part of her equine ablutions. ‘I think I got it,’ Gully said. He told Leo to blow down the tube. ‘If I did put it down the windpipe in error, you’ll get her breath back from her lungs.’

  Leo tried to do as he was asked, but he could not. There was a resistance.

  ‘That’s good,’ Gully said. ‘It’s about in the right place.’ He asked George to join them and to hold the end of the tube up in the air. ‘Put this funnel in. Higher! Over here.’ Gully climbed on to the nearest wheel of his vardo. Once he was stood steady he poured linseed oil into the funnel. When the oil had all gone he pulled the rubber tube carefully back out through the Suffolk Punch’s nostril.

  Gully asked Leo to let the Punch out in the field to stretch her legs then bring her back for Henery to take to the farmer who might buy her. Leo wondered why Gully would not do that himself. The old man shook his head. ‘I’ll buy but I’d rather not sell. Me, I’m not much good. You’ve seen yon lad. He’s got the gift a the hawkin. The bluster. He’s full of it.’

  The boy thought that Henery would need to be. He led the carthorse into the field where the gypsy horses grazed, those of the Orchards and the Hicks all together. He untied the halter rope and stood back. And then to his astonishment the Suffolk Punch put her head first down, then up, and without further ado she set off and trotted away across the field. At some point she broke into a canter. She kicked her heels and galloped from one side of the field to the hedge on the other, turned and cantered back. Years fell away from her. Leo had never seen such a transformation in a horse. It was as if her ancient form had all of a sudden given birth to some younger version of herself. An act of magic, or miracle, but from some other Bible than the one he knew. It came to him that he wanted to share the experience, and realised that it was Lottie Prideaux he wished to tell.

  *

  In the evening George soaked his hands in petrol, as he had been doing every night for some weeks. Rhoda complained of the stink but George told her he had grown to like it and planned to give her some as a gift in the form of perfume.

  Samson came over. He informed Leo that he would ride in the bareback races for them, it had been decided. Levi Hicks had told them how the boy could ride. It was a great honour for him. Leo nodded. He did not know about the races but he could not wait to ride the white colt.

  Then Samson reached up and touched his giant son on the shoulder. ‘Will you look at him, Leo?’ he said. ‘He’s a freak a nature, honest to God. He come from my loins and those a my juval there, but would you look at him?’

  Leo asked the burly old man if he’d been a fighter himself, as people said. Samson filled his pipe with tobacco and lit it. ‘I was a pugilist, for my sins,’ he said. ‘I fought all sorts. All over. I fought with Welsh mountain fighters and cockney practitioners a the fistic art. I’ve beat em good, Leo, till they was washed in their own blood, and I’ve been beat bad myself, make no mistake about it, and I never backed down, Leo, never. But my boy’s twice the fighter I ever was. He’ll fight tomorrow, he’ll fight the locals, and if there’s a gentleman turns up with his fighter and wishes to make a wager, we’ll have George fight him for the purse. But I wish he’d fight a Penfold.’

  Samson stared at Rhoda’s fire. He smoked his pipe, eyes narrowed, his body hunched tighter into itself.

  ‘Mendoza Penfold was the biggest bastard of the lot, God rest his soul,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t stand that man. I fought him three times and I’d a liked to fight him three or thirty times more. I’d fight him now if he was not beneath the mud. He bit the top a me ear off, Leo, do you see that there? He bit it off and spat it into the long grass, the bastard. We never found it. One a the dogs had it, most likely.’

  Leo inspected the old man’s truncated ear where he had held his hair aside for the boy’s scrutiny. Samson grinned. ‘We all used to take a bite back in them days. Me, I’d take a bit a yer ear, yer nose, yer fuckin cheek. And I wouldn’t spit it out, boy, I’d swallow it.’

  As he lay in his blanket under the waggon that night Leo heard voices coming from the direction of Gully’s campfire. Henery spoke loudly. ‘To be replaced on the eve a the race!’ he cried. ‘By a fuckin gentile? How can you all do this to me, Uncle?’

  Gully spoke in reply but much more quietly, his voice indistinct. Leo lay in the darkness. Surely he was not making another enemy?

  *

  On the day following, some of the men went to set up a boxing ring in the Okehampton showground. The moor rose up to the south. To the north lay rolling hills of green fields dotted with white sheep or red cattle. Samson proclaimed that in the afternoon Gentle Geor
ge the bare-knuckle champion would take on all-comers. This Leo did not see but had explained to him by George back at the campsite, where the big man whittled clothes pegs from hazel for Rhoda to sell as if this were any other day.

  After he had completed his chores, Leo rode the white colt. Levi put on reins. Gully stood back. Henery lurked in the background with three or four others. Leo took off his boots and rode the colt bareback in the farmer’s field. He made it trot in large circles and turn about. He wished to judge its mouth. It resisted him. He brought it over to Gully and the lad Levi who owned it, and told them the colt felt all wrong, or rather he himself did, it was not the fault of the horse. He did not believe he could ride it as he once had. Another rider would not destroy their chances in the race as he would. He was sorry.

  Gully stood there mystified. Leo passed the reins to Levi, slid off the horse and walked barefoot out of the field. Back at George and Rhoda’s waggon he was tying the laces of his boots when Henery stood before him. He said nothing but loomed above the boy. Leo tied his bootlaces carefully, methodically. He glanced up. Henery was looking at him. Waiting for his attention.

  ‘You don’t fool me,’ he said. ‘You might a fooled them, I can’t say, probably not . . . give em a little while . . . but you don’t fool me for a minute.’ He shook his head. ‘Leo,’ he said, ‘I’d rather be insulted than thrown off that fuckin animal. Have me bones broke.’ Henery grinned. ‘And I’d rather make some tin out a you than lose it on meself. Do you see, Leo? Now get them fuckin boots a yours off again.’

  *

  Leo rode the white colt. There was nothing stiff or awkward in his comportment. He sat the horse like some languid companion of the animal. When he kicked with his bare heels and the horse galloped from one corner of the field to another, the boy and the beast seemed to conjoin one to the other. The faster they rode, the more snug the fit, as Leo’s body and his limbs adapted themselves to those of the colt in motion.