Water Gypsies

by Annie Murray

  The back row of the pews on the left was empty so she slipped into it, moving half way along so she could see round the heads in front and loosening her scarf. Standing with the others while the singing carried on, she looked round. At the front was a raised dais with a plain wooden lectern on it. On the back wall, which was pale green, hung dark blue curtains drawn apart. Between them a wooden cross was fixed to the wall and to the right of it was a door.

  Maryann saw that one of the two men standing at the front – dressed in just their own sombre suits – was Pastor James Owen. She was surprised at the sudden sense of relief she felt in seeing him in this strange place. She wasn’t used to public buildings or meetings now. She was used to the cabins of boats. Pastor Owen was not wearing his hat and she saw that his hair was a sludgy brown and obviously not recently aquainted with the barber’s, as it hung in a bedraggled fashion down to his collar. His eyes moved soulfully over the pitiful little congregation as they sang, though his own voice was drowned out by that of the other minister beside him, who seemed to think he had to compensate for the feebleness of everyone else and was booming out the words. ‘Blood … ransom … die…’ came floating to Maryann. She took in the all-over roundness of the man. He had no need of a barber as his head was completely bald and his cranium, cheeks, nose and stomach all had a cheerful, doughnut-like rotundity. She was just taking in another realization, that all the congregation were women, bar one pale, intense-looking man whom she guessed to be in his thirties, when Pastor Owen caught her eye. To her consternation she saw him leave his place and walk down the aisle towards her.

  God Almighty! she thought, her hands going all clammy with nerves. What’s he doing? Her heart was pounding. What’s he coming over here for? He’s not going to show me up in front of all these people is he? But Pastor Owen simply gave her a faint smile of acknowledgment and stood in at the end of the pew. When the singing stopped he stayed there.

  Maryann sat down on the hard seat, which seemed to have been designed to deny any possibility of comfort and forced her to sit bolt upright. She couldn’t get away now, could she? He was blocking one end of the pew and the other was hard up against the wall! Again, she had an unnerving sense that he could see into her mind. There were prayers. Maryann put her hands in her lap and closed her eyes, but didn’t take in a word of what was being said. Her mind was fluttering between the worry that she was sniffing all the time and had nothing to wipe her nose on and noticing that the room smelt of a rank mixture of camphor, urine and frowsty clothes. All the time she was acutely aware of the long shape of Pastor Owen to her right and wondered why had he sat there. What did he want? It had not, before, occurred to her that he wanted something from her.

  Next, the minister stood up and loudly, with dramatic sweeps of his arms, preached about the paralysed man whose friends let him down through the roof to be cured by Jesus. Every time he said the Lord’s name, in his Black Country accent, he emphasized it: JESUS. On and on he went, about being paralysed by our sins, but the only time Maryann took in anything was when he hammered home the word JESUS … JESUS … She felt her mind seize up with boredom. What the hell had she come here for? JESUS. She should be back at home with her lad, who was poorly, not sitting here on this flaming hard seat with her backside … JESUS … turning numb!

  At last, after endless prayers and another dismal hymn, the service ended. She found herself feeling angry and cheated. Where was the sense of forgiveness, of release she had come to find? She rearranged her scarf over her hair and tied the ends, but as she did so, Pastor Owen slid along the pew towards her and looked into her eyes in that way which always made her feel stripped naked.

  ‘I’m glad you came.’

  As Maryann couldn’t truthfully claim the same, she said, ‘So this is your church, is it?’

  ‘I work with Pastor Joyce, yes. Though, as I’m not in charge of the mission here, I have a little more freedom to go out to the needy instead of waiting for them to come to me.’

  Was that what she was then? One of the needy?

  There was a pause as she looked down into her lap and Pastor Owen sat forward with his lanky arms resting on his thighs. Maryann just wanted to go, to be at home, but she wasn’t going to be able to get past him yet. Other people were leaving, gathering up their hats, walking sticks and torches, nodding and smiling at him as they went.

  ‘There’s someone here I’d like you to see,’ he said, staring ahead of him at the cross on the wall. ‘Someone whose soul is also in need of succour and healing – as I believe yours is.’ He looked deep into her eyes again and Maryann felt herself tremble inside at this close attention. ‘That’s why I especially hoped you’d come.’

  ‘To see? Who?’ She felt panicky now. What was she letting herself in for? She felt suddenly as if Pastor Owen, young and unlikely a prophet as he seemed, knew every single thing about her, that she was dirty and wicked, that she was a woman who had taken the life of her unborn child. And who on earth was he going to present to her? Some ill-used woman whom he’d picked up on the streets, bulging out at the front with some bully’s spawn? A lady of the night that he wanted her to reform? Was he out of his mind? She had come to him for help but he was the one making demands on her.

  ‘I don’t think… ’ she tried to protest.

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a member of our congregation who carries a weight of sorrow in their heart.’

  Maryann thought of the ladies who’d been sitting around her. She couldn’t imagine what possible help she might give any of them, but they hadn’t looked all that fearsome had they? She hoped it wasn’t the intense young man he’d got lined up for her with some odd request, but she was pretty sure she’d seen him leave.

  Pastor Owen stood up and turned to her. ‘Assist me – just for a few moments – please, Mrs Bartholomew. It would make a great different to someone, and I believe it would give you rest in your own soul.’

  She was drawn in. How could she refuse him? If he had held out his hand to her then, she would have taken it. Instead, he indicated with a movement of his head that they should move along to the front of the chapel. Aflutter with nerves, she followed him.

  Sixteen

  Pastor Owen led her to the front of the chapel, towards the door which opened off to the right of the cross. Just as they reached it, it opened and Pastor Joyce came out. His big mixing-bowl face took on an expression that was grave about the eyes but smiling at the mouth, the sort of smile he might give to someone bereaved.

  ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘Good evening to you! You’ve come to see our poor friend then?’

  ‘The healing grace of the Lord may well be seen in this place tonight,’ Pastor Owen said. The combination of this pronouncement and the other man’s coffin-side expression made Maryann want to run down the aisle and escape through the back doors. Bewildered, she followed Pastor Owen into a small, dimly lit room. It was bare: a wooden floor, small table in the middle, over which hung a dimly burning light bulb with no shade. There were a couple of hard chairs. The only other thing she noticed was the jaundiced colour of the light, for the walls were yellow. She took in all of this in a couple of seconds because what snatched her attention from anything else, was the figure kneeling sideways on in the far corner. The sight stole the breath from her. She stood quite still, unable to move.

  ‘Our friend is a spirit deep in remorse,’ Pastor Owen was saying. ‘He has come regularly to our congregation, pouring out to me his misdeeds, his sorrows, which weigh him down and blacken his soul in the eyes of the Lord. All he needs to free him now is to feel the forgiveness of the people he has transgressed against. Without that forgiveness…’ But Maryann wasn’t listening. For her the only thing in the room was the broad-shouldered figure in the black coat, trilby hat pulled well down, raising itself to its feet with a heavy, lumbering movement and beginning to move towards her.

  Everything seemed slow, dreamlike. Closer he came, his shape, the gait so utterly familiar, the
figure that had haunted her days and polluted her dreams for so many years. He reached the table and loomed over her, his body like a box, filling the room with his square shoulders. The bulb dangled over his head, and with the unhurried relish of one who enjoys inflicting pain, her stepfather raised his head slowly, turning his face out of the shadow to the light and looked into her eyes.

  The features were more disfigured than she had even imagined. She began breathing again, with a gasp of revulsion. That night when little Margaret Lambert, driven by his cruelty, had smashed a lamp over his head, the oil had poured out and burned fiercely on him. The left side of his face was completely altered, a mass of puckered flesh reaching right down his neck, where raised ridges alternated with flat areas which had an unnatural shininess. His left eye was completely hidden in the contorted skin. The right side had been burned, though less severely, and it was into Griffin’s lashless right eye that Maryann found herself looking back. She gripped the edge of the table, afraid her legs might give way.

  ‘Maryann – you came then.’ His voice hadn’t changed. Oh, heavens no, it hadn’t! Now it contained a humble, wheedling tone, but it was still the voice that had whispered to her through her bedroom door, had spat such vile words into her ear as he laid his weight on her, forcing, fouling her. In those seconds a flare of rage lit in her that had lain dormant all these years. She was suddenly possessed by it, shaking all over as if she was running a fever. Turning to Pastor Owen she lashed him with it.

  ‘What the hell d’you think you’re playing at bringing him here? How dare you deceive me into coming here to meet … this?’ She could only finish the sentence with a gesture of revolt, slapping her hands down on the table. ‘What d’you want from me? You’re mad! You’ve no idea what he’s like – what he’s done…’

  Pastor James held his hands out as if he thought he was Jesus calming the storm.

  ‘Mrs Bartholomew – please. I beg you. Don’t reject this man. He knows he has done terrible things. He’s full of remorse for his past sins. He has told me of them and he needs to express his sorrow. To repent and begin afresh.’

  ‘Maryann – please.’ Norman Griffin’s voice came out brokenly, hoarse with contrition. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s been like all these years living with this.’ He pointed at himself, at his scarred face. ‘Like a leper – the sign of my guilt. I need to know forgiveness. To be able to live at peace with myself.’

  Maryann looked from one to the other, having to grope for words. ‘To live at peace?’ In order to speak normally at all, instead of raging or screaming which her whole being felt tuned to do, she had to lower her voice to a snarl. ‘You don’t deserve to live at all. Yes, you’re guilty all right.’ Again she turned on Pastor Owen. ‘I suppose you think you know about him. I s’pose he’s told you some soft soap about a few little pinches and smacks, about his wicked, ungrateful stepchildren? You think a few smacks would drive a child to do that?’ She pointed at Norman’s face. ‘D’you want to hear what he did? What he really did? You poor, stupid, little man – you really think you’re doing something grand, saving his soul, don’t you? Well, let me tell you – you’ve picked on the one person on this earth who doesn’t have one.’

  ‘Please – let me say I’m sorry. I want to make amends for what I’ve done.’ Norman Griffin started to move round the table and Maryann backed away from him.

  ‘Don’t come near me!’ she shrieked, losing control of herself. ‘You make my flesh creep. You’re vile and disgusting. Keep him away from me!’

  To her surprise, Norman stopped, standing still, lowering his head. For a moment she was at a loss.

  ‘No deed is beyond our Saviour’s forgiveness,’ Pastor Owen pleaded, holding his hands out towards her. He seemed really distressed, his eyes like huge pebbles under the light. ‘Forgive for your own sake, Maryann. If you can’t forgive, your soul is trapped in darkness. Forgiveness is new life.’

  A sound broke through the room, something so foreign and unknown that Maryann at first could not recognize it. It came to her that it was a sob, that it had come from Norman Griffin, from beneath the lowered brim of his hat.

  ‘He lives day by day in hell.’ Pastor Owen declared emotionally. ‘And you too will live in hell if you don’t forgive him.’ He went to Maryann and attempted to take her hand.

  ‘Don’t you touch me, you bloody nutcase!’ She backed away, tightly folding her arms. She’d had quite enough of Pastor James with his earnest Mancunian pleading. ‘What’s it to you? You don’t care about how I feel – you just want to be able to show off about how many souls you’ve “saved”.’

  But she was deflated. The room felt very cold and she was suddenly full of doubt, seeing the scarred, broken figure with his head bowed, across the room. For those seconds, she was the one here who was made to seem cruel. But other pictures flashed into her mind, rescuing her: of Sal, her older sister, on the bed that day she’d found her lying in the dark, the blood still dripping from her wrists; of Margaret, dead-eyed in the asylum.

  ‘Can you find it in your heart to forgive him?’ Pastor James pressed her. ‘To free this troubled soul?’

  Maryann looked across at the young man in his poor, sagging clothes and pitied him his naive ardour.

  ‘You’ve no idea, have you?’ She managed to speak more quietly now. ‘He can’t just change in one night. Not someone like him. It won’t just drop off him. If he lives in hell, it’s where he belongs. He put himself there – no one else did it.’

  To Norman she said, ‘I don’t know what you want with me now. But whatever it is, you’re not getting it. I was the one who was never fooled by you, remember? I know you, and I know you don’t have a remorseful bone in your body.’

  She moved towards the door. ‘I wouldn’t tangle with the likes of him,’ she told the young man. ‘He’s beyond redemption.’

  As she turned to leave there came a sudden movement and she found the door pushed shut by Norman Griffin’s hand. He was upon her suddenly, and so close to her that she could feel his breath on her cheek and she recoiled, but he moved closer, forcing the door shut.

  ‘Don’t go – not yet,’ he entreated. The voice was soft, caressing. She couldn’t look at him. She kept her eyes down, fixed on his black boots, her own brown ones. ‘It’s all right, Maryann. Don’t worry. I can wait.’ And then he let her open the door.

  She fled out through the chapel, to the dark street. It was difficult to hurry outside, even though her whole being cried run, run! The night fog swirled round her, seemingly full of threat, of unknown presences.

  ‘Turn right, and right!’ She was muttering feverishly to herself. It was hard to see where she was going, to hurry. ‘It’s not far. Keep going…’

  Every so often she stopped, but there was silence as soon as her own footsteps were stilled. She knew really that Norman Griffin would not come after her. If he had run out of the chapel behind her, Pastor Owen would surely have followed as well. And knowing Norman Griffin as she did, she knew he was a man who would bide his time. After all, if all he’d wanted was to jump out on her, why go through all this rigmarole of repentance in order to see her? But even so every nerve in her body seem to jangle, her breath sobbing in her lungs as she scurried through the dark streets. Oh God, she knew she had seen him on the wharf all those months ago – and then someone else had said he was asking for her? She knew she had not imagined it – he was after her. What did he want with her?

  Most of all, what she could not get out of her head were his final words, speaking in that remorseful, patient tone for the benefit of the young missionary: Don’t worry. I can wait.

  Seventeen

  By the time she arrived back at the boats, Maryann was in such a state she could hardly get the hatches of the Theodore open. Once she had managed to, she almost fell inside and slammed the doors shut again, panting so hard that she was sobbing.

  Joel’s face appeared round the bed curtain. He’d been lying down but was not asleep and the light wa
s still burning.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ It took him a moment to realize she was seriously frightened.

  ‘He was there!’ She spoke in a hoarse whisper, trying not to wake Joley and the twins. ‘Norman Griffin! That preacher’s a right stupid bugger.’

  Joel gave her a look which said, ‘Well, I could have told you that.’ With trembling legs, Maryann climbed over the sleeping toddlers in their nest on the floor, where Jenny the tortoiseshell cat was curled beside them, and went to sit by Joel, shivering. She turned to look at Joley on the bed behind them.

  ‘He’s been sick a little while back,’ Joel told her.

  ‘Poor lamb.’ Frowning, her own preoccupations calmed for a moment she stroked his head. Beside it lay his precious tobacco tin of cigarette cards. ‘He doesn’t feel feverish. Maybe that’ll be all for tonight.’ She snuggled close to Joel and he put his arm round her.

  ‘What’s up with you then?’ He squeezed her tight, trying to still her shaking.

  She felt jarred with shock and anger. Now she could let it out and tell him what happened, tears came as well.

  ‘Seeing him again was horrible,’ she wept. ‘His face is such a mess and there he was, pretending to be all sorry, as if he’s changed and I know he hasn’t. He’s got that Pastor Owen wrapped round his little finger – I bet he told him to come and find me. Oh, Joel, what does he want? When I was leaving he told me he could wait – as if he’s going to keep coming after us.’

  ‘Eh, there.’ Joel wrapped his arms round her, rocking her, her head pressed against his chest.

  ‘What can he do to us? He’s an old ’un, must be nigh on seventy, ent he? And we’re hardly ever up here in Birnigum. Don’t you worry about him – we’ll be loaded up and gone in the morning and he won’t know where to find us then, will he?’