‘Yes, ma’am, it does. But … well, what about the man that was running?’
The Duchess gave Smiler a steady look and then said evenly, ‘You don’t have to worry about him. Just for a moment his future got crossed with yours. Just as telephone calls get mixed up sometimes.’
The Duchess took the silk cloth and draped it over the crystal ball. With a warm smile she said, ‘Right, Samuel Miles – now I want to hear all about yourself and your troubles. Take your time and start from the beginning.’
So Smiler told her everything about himself and of all his troubles; starting from the time when Johnny Pickering had come running around the corner and tossed the old lady’s handbag to him, through all his adventures since he had run away from the approved school, right up to the moment that Jimmy Jago had picked him up on the road in Scotland.
When he had finished the Duchess said, ‘Well, you aren’t the first that’s come to this house with the police after them. Circus and Romany folk sometimes have to follow their own laws – and the police don’t like that. But if you keep your fingers crossed and your eyes open you should have no trouble here. The local policeman is a friend of ours. You’d like to stay here, would you?’
‘Yes, please, ma’am.’
‘Well, the wages are small, the work hard, and the food good. And since, if you’re going to begin something, there’s no time like the present, I’ll take you over to the Ancients because you’ll be working under them.’
A bit diffidently, Smiler asked, ‘Who are the Ancients, ma’am? Are they men?’
‘Of course they are.’
‘And are they very old?’
The Duchess chuckled, her fat chins bobbing and her curls shaking. ‘They’re both old – that’s why they’re called the Ancients. Bill and Bob Old. That’s their name. And a word of warning – never play cards with them for money.’
See Flight of the Grey Goose.
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2. The Starlight Men
The Duchess took Smiler across the yard to one of the stone barns where he met Bob and Bill Old. They were twin brothers in their early fifties, small, sturdy-looking men with weather-brown, wrinkled faces, bright, mischievous-looking eyes and the perky, cheeky air of a couple of Jackdaws. So far as Smiler could see, there was no way of telling them apart except by the clothes they wore. Above his gum boots and corduroy trousers Bob wore a green sweater and on his head, cocked saucily over his iron-grey hair, was a green woollen bonnet with a white bob on the top. Bill’s dress was the same, except that his sweater and bonnet were red. But after a few days Smiler realized that the clothes were no sure guide because they swopped clothes some days according to their fancy. They lived a bachelor life in a small cottage up the hill from the farm. Smiler never learned where they had come from or what they had done before they began to work for the Duchess, except that he could guess from their talk that they had both been travelling men and knew a great deal about circuses, fairs and gypsy life. This last he knew because when they didn’t want him to know what they were saying they would talk in the Romany language that the Duchess and Jimmy sometimes used.
The Duchess said to them, ‘Samuel Miles – your new hand. He’s a good lad; work him hard, and treat him fair. He’s been in a spot of trouble, still is – so he’s one of our kind.’ Then, with a look at Smiler, she nodded at the men in turn, saying, ‘That’s Bob and that’s Bill. At least, I think it is.’ With a chuckle she ruffled Smiler’s hair and swept regally out of the barn.
The two men looked at one another and then at Smiler. Then they walked slowly round him and, as they did so, Bill said, ‘Good
shoulders.’
Bob said, ‘Stands well.’
Bill said, ‘Wind sound, I should think.’
Bob said, ‘Let’s see how he moves.’
Bill said to Smiler, ‘Trot.’
Smiler said, ‘ Please?’
Bob said, ‘Trot. Once round the barn.’
Suspecting that he was having his leg pulled Smiler gave a grin
and solemnly trotted round the confined space of the barn.
Bill said, ‘Nice action.’
Bob said, ‘Sprinter?’
Bill shook his head. ‘ No, stayer.’
Bob said, ‘He’ll do then.’
Bill said, ‘Welcome, Samuel Miles.’
‘Thank you,’ said Smiler.
Bob said, ‘You like playing cards?’
Smiler grinned, ‘ Not for money.’
Bill said sadly, ‘She’s warned him.’
‘Pity,’ said Bob. ‘Only thing left is work. This way lad.’
Bill gave Smiler a nod and a wink and went out of the barn,
and Bob took Smiler in hand, explaining very solemnly what he
would be expected to do. For Smiler it presented no problems
because it was going to be much the same work that he had been
doing in Scotland. There were animals to be fed, cages and pens
to be mucked out, bedding to be carried, and corn sacks and hay
bales to be humped, and then helping in all the hundred and one
seasonal jobs that had to be done around the farm.
The barn they were in was used as a store and a garage for the
tractor and other farm implements. The other barn, which was
fitted out with cages and pens, held the boarders which were in
residence at the moment. Outside in the large field which ran from
the back of the farm down to the brook, there were at the moment
two donkeys, a shetland pony, and the house cow. Between the
two barns was a short run of stables for the horses that would be
coming during the off season. At the moment they were empty. Bill explained that he and Bob, after they had left work and gone up to their cottage, had been taking it in turns to come down around ten o’clock at night to see that everything was all right in the barn which housed the birds and animals. Now, since Smiler was on hand in the farm, this was to be his duty. Before he went to bed he would make a last inspection and, if he heard a commotion at night, he would have to go out to attend to any trouble.
Smiler decided that he liked Bob and Bill, though he found it difficult to know when they were being serious or pulling his leg. Up in his room after work where he was getting cleaned up and changed for supper Smiler decided, too, that it had been a lucky moment that had brought Jimmy Jago along the road at the right time to pick him up. ‘ You were lucky, Samuel M.,’ he told himself. ‘And let’s hope the Duchess is right about what she saw in the crystal ball.’
When Smiler went down to supper he was surprised to find that Jimmy Jago was not there, though he had seen him around during the day.
‘Has Mr Jago gone off again?’ he asked the Duchess.
‘Yes, he has, Samuel,’ said the Duchess. ‘ Jimmy goes and comes like the wind. He’s got restless feet and he doesn’t like a roof over his head long. He’s always on the go, buying a bit here and selling a bit there, and God knows what else, and never an answer to a straight question. You’ll get used to it.’
‘But Scampi’s not gone.’
‘No –’ she grinned – ‘I expect Yin wouldn’t let him. Now eat your supper and, while you’re doing it, tell me all about this business of yours of wanting to be a vet.’
So Smiler, between mouthfuls, told her all about his ambition to be a vet and then to marry Laura Mackay, his girl friend, who was going to have a farm one day so they could combine the two things. When he had finished, the Duchess eyed him severely and said, ‘With the education you tell me you’ve had, you’ve set yourself an uphill struggle – but that’s all to the good when you’re young. Well, if it’s education you’re after we’ll have to see what we can do about it once you’re settled in. Meanwhile, when you go up to your room, take this with you.’
She put something on the table between them. It was a small model in coloured clays of a boy with fair hair, whose
shoulders were hunched forward slightly, supporting a small pebble which he was carrying like a rucksack.
‘What’s that for, ma’am?’
‘It’s for you – but it isn’t you, Samuel. It’s that Johnny Pickering of yours.’
‘But – I don’t understand?’
‘It’s more magic, Samuel. Not black magic, but good magic. He did you harm, he caused you all your trouble. He’s got a bad conscience because no one can escape their conscience. I’ve put a spell on him. Not a bad one, but a naggling one.’ The Duchess tapped the tip of her large nose. ‘A niggling, naggling one. Keep it in your room and one day you’ll find that pebble’s come unstuck and tumbled off. That will be the day when things will begin to go right for you. You’ll see.’
‘You really mean that, ma’am?’
‘Of course. And you must really believe it, Samuel. Really believe it. You know why?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Because the strongest part of all magic is belief. When that pebble falls … well, you’ll see.’
That night before he went to bed Smiler walked across to the second barn to see that the birds and animals were all right. (Later on he never bothered to go down through the house, but would step out of his bedroom window on to the roof of the kitchen extension and then jump down to the path. To get back he always kept a couple of boxes handy to step up on so that he could reach the roof.)
He unlocked the small door of the barn with the key which was hidden under the water-butt. Bob had already conducted him around the inmates of the barn and he knew most of their names and some of their histories. He switched on the overhead light and walked down the length of the barn.
Just now most of the large pens and cages were empty. In one was a chimpanzee called Freddie who was convalescing from a bad attack of bronchitis and had been left there by a circus which had been touring the West Country. Freddie, curled up in a bed of hay, looked up as Smiler came to his cage, wrinkled his mask at him in a friendly gesture, and then piled hay over his head as if to indicate that he wanted no more disturbance. In a cage a little farther down was a black poodle bitch recovering from a broken foreleg. This was Mabel. Seeing Smiler she came out of her sleeping-box and walked across to him on her hind legs and thrust her muzzle between the bars and held out her plaster-bound foreleg for him to shake. Smiler fondled her muzzle, shook hands with her and sent her back to bed. In other pens and cages, all for some reason or other temporary lodgers, were animals from the menageries and children’s zoos which travelled with the circuses; a Barbary ram, a small honey bear, a porcupine and, in the end pen, a South American tapir which was stretched out on its side snoring like an old man.
On the other side of the barn were the bird cages. All of these were empty except for three. One held a griffon vulture, huddled on its perch like a dejected old lady with a shabby boa of feathers around her neck. Another held a pair of Indian mynah birds. As Smiler stood in front of their cage one of them opened a sleepy but bright eye, surveyed him, and then, giving a drowsy whistle, said, ‘Lord, look at the time! Look at the time!’ whistled once more, and closed its eye. But of all the creatures in the barn, the bird in the third occupied cage was the one which interested Smiler most of all. It was a peregrine falcon.
Her name was Fria and Bob had told him that she had been taken from an eyrie in Wales – before she could properly fly – by a falconer who intended to train her. But the circumstances of his own life had changed after a while and he had given her to the Duchess. He had felt that this was the best thing to do because to have loosed her to freedom would only have meant her death. She had had no training in how to hunt for her food and her wings were stiff and incapable of long flight from lack of the exercise she would have had in the wild state.
Fria sat on her perch, eyes wide open, and watched Smiler. She was now over two years old and had long moulted into her adult plumage so that her whitish breast was streaked crosswise with grey, whereas before, her breast had been buff-coloured and streaked vertically with brown. Her back was now a deep blue-black. There was little gloss or shine to her feathers and she looked a sorry sight. But for all this there was still a fierce dignity in the way she stared from fixed eyes at Smiler as though to prove that for all her captivity her spirit was still far from broken.
Smiler felt a lump rise in his throat as he eyed her. He didn’t like to see animals in captivity at all, though he knew that it was inevitable that some had to be, especially those to whom freedom would mean death. But Fria moved him more than all the others. Of all creatures he loved birds because they seemed to carry the real meaning of freedom in their lives. In Scotland he had watched the high-soaring of golden eagles and the lazy circling of buzzards, seen the strong, steady flight of geese and the wild aerobatics of green plovers, and before that, when he had first run away from approved school, watched the wing-trembling hover of kestrels over Salisbury Plain and the marauding swoop of sparrow-hawks along hedges and around trees as they chased their prey.
Now, watching Fria, he wondered if she could remember back to the days of her eyrie life, to the moment when her wings were growing strong enough almost to the point of lifting her into flight alongside her falcon mother and her tiercel father … to take her up into the freedom of the air where she would be taught to stoop and prey and slowly gain a mastery of the air which would have been her real life. It was something he didn’t like to think about.
He moved away, switched off the light and locked up the barn. As he went to his bed, because all his recently passed troubles and adventures had, without his knowing it, begun to mature him, to change the boy of near sixteen to the beginning of manhood, he told himself that although Nature was full of death and cruelty it was a savagery that was without real evil. But the cruelty of man towards animals came not from any natural law but from the stupidity and thoughtlessness of men. Before he slept he told himself, ‘Samuel M., things should be different, they really should. And they could be if people knew how to care.’ For a while he even wondered whether he could really bear to stay here where so many animals were cooped up and then decided that he could because, at least, he could look after them even if he could never give them freedom.
When he awoke in the morning, however, he didn’t feel half so gloomy about things and, if he had, the work he had to do through the day would have given him little time for brooding.
Within a month Smiler was feeling very much at home at Bullaybrook Farm. He knew the routine for all the jobs he had to do, and he did them well, for he was a good worker. The Duchess was pleased with him and so were Bill and Bob for, although they laughed and joked and pulled his leg, when it came to work they would not tolerate a half-done, sloppy job. In his spare time and at the weekends Smiler, too, had begun to discover the country around the farm. In the store barn was an old bicycle which had been bought in some deal by Jimmy Jago. Smiler put it in order and explored the surrounding lanes and the brook and river valley on it.
And in that month the shape and purpose of Smiler’s life began to be defined. The Duchess had a talk with the local veterinary surgeon who came now and then to treat sick or ailing animals. After he had gone she explained to Smiler (though he knew some of this already) that he would have to study for the General Certificate of Education, first at the Ordinary level and then at the Advanced level – in which he would need two or three passes. When this was done he could apply for admission to one of the Universities which provided courses leading to degrees in veterinary science or veterinary medicine and surgery. Once he had a degree it would give him the right to be registered in the Register of Veterinary Surgeons and to membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and the right to practise the profession in the United Kingdom. Apart from studying general subjects, Smiler would eventually have to tackle chemistry, physics and biology.
Listening to her, Smiler felt swamped by the prospect of the task ahead and his face showed it.
The Duchess chuckled and said,
‘Cheer up, Samuel. You can go a long way in small steps if you’ve plenty of time ahead of you – and you’ve got that. Fix your eye on the first mountaintop and forget the ones that lie beyond. Their turn will come.’
Grinning ruefully, Smiler asked, ‘How am I goin’ to get up the first mountain, ma’am? I never did much at school.’
‘That’s your fault. But it’s never too late.’
To prove it the Duchess arranged with a friend of hers, a retired schoolmaster in a nearby village, to start giving Smiler lessons two evenings a week in general subjects. Twice a week Smiler cycled to the village and was coached by the retired schoolmaster, a Mr Samkin. Every day thereafter Smiler had to and time, either before or after supper, to work at a small table in his own room. Since the nights were now drawing in as October passed he didn’t mind so much, but he wondered how he would stick it when the winter passed and spring and summer came, and all the springs and summers of the years ahead when the evenings were drawn out and full of invitation to go abroad into fields and woods. The only answer he could find was to tell himself, ‘If you want something bad, Samuel M., then you got to work for it. The great thing is not to think about it too much, but take it step by step like the Duchess says.’
Smiler’s birthday came and he was sixteen. Jimmy Jago was at home for it and gave him a good second-hand watch. ‘Now you’re a working and studying man, my lad, you must value time. It’s like water under a bridge. Once gone you can’t bring it back.’ The Duchess gave him a thick sweater she had knitted herself, a stormproof jacket for the winter, and a fountain pen for writing up his notes because Mr Samkin was old-fashioned enough to value good writing and turned up his nose at biros and self-propelling nonsenses like that. And Bill and Bob – not without design – gave him an old twelve-bore, single-barrelled shotgun, promised to provide the cartridges for it, and to teach him how to use it, so that from then on he could shoot the pigeons and rabbits around the farm for the table and also for feeding Fria – and relieve them of the job. When Smiler asked about having a licence for it, Bob looked at him (or it might have been Bill), winked, and said, ‘We’ll meet that fence when we come to it. But remember – if we ever see you handle that gun anyway different from what we’re goin’ to show you, then you get your backside beaten and you’ll be thrown in the Bullay brook.’
The Painted Tent Page 3
