Stone Cradle (14 page)

I stood around for a bit, then I read the poem.

Elijah is a queer one, I thought. He must have told the man my name and got me the flower and the poem so why did he not take credit for it?

I was still standing close to the crowd that was watching Toby, so I heard the boy with the cap shouting, ‘Oi! Which of you mean bastards put a button in my cap?’

I decided to take a wander around, figuring that Elijah would be able to find me when he chose as long as I did not stray too far. It was sixpence to go inside the tent of the Menagerie and see the Elephant Ridden by a Valorous Maiden and of course I had no money on me – so the Steam Powered Rides were out of the question as well. I watched the Eel Dipping, for a bit, which was quite droll. Next to the eels was A Three Legged Cat in a cage but I thought that was horrible and didn’t look. The novelty of hanging around on my own was beginning to wear off and I began to feel annoyed with Elijah. Why could he not have taken me along with him to see the man he knew? I was hungry.

By the time he returned, I was ready to be sharp with him, but before I could say a word, he lifted up one fist and shook it in the air. It made a rattling sound. I could tell he was pleased with himself.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

He dropped whatever rattled into his pocket. Then, he showed me that both his hands were empty. Next, he clapped them together, shook his sleeves, then lifted one hand from the other to reveal a palm full of coins; some pennies, thre’penny and sixpenny bits – even some florins.

‘Elijah!’ I cried. ‘Where did you get that from?’

He tapped the size of his nose. ‘Never let it be said I don’t know how to show my Rosie a good time …’ He linked his arm with mine and turned me. ‘Now, where was that hog-roast man?’

The hog was roasted so well his skin was as orange as Aunt Lilly’s hair and hard and crispy as a sugar stick. As the butcher sliced into it, you could see the white fat slithering beneath its shell and
the pale meat falling away. It came with a slab of bread as huge as half a loaf, and chunks of apple sauce so generous they slid off as you raised the whole to your mouth. I shrieked as I bit down on it.

Lijah had a man-size portion. It was almost as big as his face. As he bit into it he said, with his mouth full, ‘There’s good pigs and bad pigs, Rosie. And this here …’ he was grinning ‘… is a very good pig indeed!’

When we had eaten enough for it to be manageable, we strode around with it. How I loved the indelicacy of eating outside, for all to see, in the open air; the soft meat and the crispness of the crackling and the sweet, sweet apple sauce. We never had hogs done like that on River Farm, I can tell you.

We spent the whole afternoon at the fair, and we saw almost everything, then stopped and sat down and drank cider with some friends of Elijah’s, the pals he had made who had been at our wedding – George Muggleton, the monumental mason, and Albert Tanner, who was a cellarman at the malting house. I hadn’t taken to them much but after a couple of glasses of cider I decided they and their lady friends were all right and there was no point in being snooty about people. The cider made me giggle.

As the light began to fade, we left them and took another promenade to see the lanterns lit. Then we got a ferry across the river, for no reason other than Elijah thought it would be a nice idea. We walked around the boathouses and across the common. There were loads of courting couples in the twilight and we went to a wooded bit up near the farm and Elijah had a good feel. To start off with I put him off. I thought we might be getting our house soon and I wanted our first time to be in our own married bed, not out of doors like people who are up to no good. It was getting chilly as well. But his kisses melted me – we had had so little time alone together they still had that power – so I let him put his hand up my skirt. I let him start on account of wanting to please
him, then I let him continue on account of wanting to please myself.

The actualness of it was not as nice as the touching and the kisses – it hurt a bit, and made my legs feel wobbly – but he was kind and gentle afterwards. We sat and leaned against a tree trunk and he wrapped his arms around me to keep me warm and together we watched the stars pop out above us, and Elijah said, ‘We’re going to have as many babbies as there are stars in the sky, Rosie, you’ll see.’ And I watched the stars and thought of all the good things that lay ahead of us.

I
like to think that was the night my first child was conceived – my son, Daniel. I could be wrong about that, of course, as Elijah made sure we had one or two other opportunities before we moved into number twenty-two. I do so like the idea that my Daniel came into being inside me on that night, when Elijah held me in his arms beneath the stars. I suppose it could have just as easily have been the next time, when we did it awkwardly and sweatily, standing up in the stable behind Gas Lane, with Elijah’s horse snorting and breathing next to us. I got my back bruised against the wooden wall.

My Daniel. How should I begin to describe that child? My first, my plumpest … the only one who never gave me a moment’s worry. I think if any mother is honest they will admit they love the first in a way they cannot love the others, especially if that first is a boy. The first one cracks you open. With the first, your whole life goes topsy-turvy and nothing is ever the same again – for it is the first that turns you from an ordinary mortal into a mother. It is a coronation you never forget.

He was born in Paradise Street, the following March.

But before that, she arrived.

Elijah had not said much about his mother before we ran away together, nor after, for that matter. I knew he lived in his wagon with an older woman and man who I assumed were his mother and father. It was only when I started to talk about my mother dying, and how I never knew my real father, that he told me the story he had learned from his mother as a boy, about his father being the King of Russia. When I laughed, I saw I had offended him. He didn’t think it funny at all.

I did think it a little odd that he didn’t want to talk of his mother at all, or his life on the camp. I asked him once, in Paradise Street, was there no one he wanted from his old life at his wedding? He scratched his head and pulled a face. ‘Well, it’s not really the done thing where I come from,’ was all he said. But surely he wanted his own mother? ‘Well, I’m not sure she’ll be all that pleased to be perfectly honest with you, Rosie …’

‘Why not?’ I asked, but I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. I didn’t press him. To be honest, I liked the idea that we had jointly discarded our old lives.

He had a good way of silencing my curiosity in those early days. Upward, he would look, then down. ‘Well, you might ask,’ he would say, with a mock frown. Later, I was to find this phrase of his infuriating, but in the first few weeks of knowing him, it only added to his air of mystery and, anyhow, he often followed it with a kiss.

Those kisses – full of everything. He would hold my face, quite firmly, hands either side of my head, and pause for a moment, looking at me, long enough to let me know that I was his now, that he would not release me for the world. Then his face would move towards mine and I would close my eyes without even meaning to. And then it came … the meeting and the parting of the lips, his
mouth first hard on mine, then soft, the grazing of our tongues together and the feel of his hands holding my face. The surrender of it … to be held firmly and kissed softly – is there any more a girl can ask for? They were hypnosis, those early kisses.

Why should I be curious about his mother?

I had been out to see Lilly. Her inflammation of the spine was bad and she had been in bed for a few days. It was past Christmas and I was too obviously with child to be out and about in the wider world, so visiting her was a nice excuse to get out of the house. The air was icy but I scarcely felt it – so huge was I my shawl could hardly cover me. I was like a great balloon as I floated down Paradise Street. People would jump into the street when they saw me coming, as if they were afraid that bumping against me might detach my moorings and send me sailing skywards.

I had left Elijah snoozing at home. He often snoozed after dinner if he had to be out late. I didn’t like it much, but he brought money home with him so I could hardly complain. New horses would appear in the Gas Lane stables now and then – then disappear a few days later, but he never got rid of the horse we rode to Cambridge on. He said every man had to have one horse that was special.

He wouldn’t let me near the horses once he knew I was carrying. He said it was bad luck. I didn’t mind. By then, I was used to the fact that he was superstitious.

Lilly loved my pregnancy. It was the nearest she would ever get to having one herself, she said, so she wanted all the details, even the private stuff like how often I needed the privvy and how I craved potato. That afternoon, we’d had a long chat and it was getting gloomy by the time I ambled down Paradise Street. I expected that Elijah would have gone out, but when I opened the door he was standing in our little sitting room, and in front of him was a small, dark woman, in an old-fashioned mourning dress
with a brooch at the neck. She looked a little comical, in fact, as she also had pointy, lace-up boots on her feet and a large hat with a drooping ostrich feather. Round her neck was a fox fur which, to my mind, looked as if it had been taken from the rest of the fox by an amateur, not necessarily a two-legged one. As I entered, she drew herself up to her full height, which was still a great deal shorter than me.

I looked at Elijah. He exhaled, then dropped himself down into his armchair. ‘Well, Rosie, looks like we’ve got company.’ He stared ahead.

The woman drew in her breath. She glanced me up and down, then picked up an old leather bag from the floor, lifted her skirts and turned to our staircase. I watched her ascend. What was this strange woman doing, going up our stairs?

Then I saw a huge carpet-bag on the floor. The penny dropped.

I rushed over to Elijah. ‘Elijah!’ I hissed, bending a little so she should not hear me, ‘that’s not your mother?’

‘Who else might it be, my love?’ he said calmly.

‘Elijah!’ I said. ‘What were you doing sitting yourself down? Haven’t you been looking after her? Why didn’t you fetch me at once from Lilly’s?’

‘She’s only just this minute arrived,’ Elijah replied irritably, waving a hand.

‘Well have you offered her some tea?’ I could not believe how ill mannered he was being, to his own mother.

‘She’s not in the mood for tea. She’s had some bad news.’

‘What news?’

‘Her husband died. She’ll be with us for a bit, all right? Now leave it be, Rosie.’

He was often gruff when he was upset, Lijah, but I had not fully learned that yet. Later I knew not to press him on anything that he might be feeling something about. ‘But, here? She’s staying here? Shouldn’t we have a talk about it?’

‘There’ll be plenty of time for all that,’ he huffed, rising from the chair. ‘Mark my words.’

He strode over to the door and took his jacket and hat from the peg on the back.

‘You’re not going out?’ I cried in dismay.

‘Oh yes, I am.’ He went to the mirror by the bottom of the stairs to check his hat was on straight.

I was bewildered. ‘What am I to do with her?’ I asked.

‘Well I daresay you’ll have plenty to talk about, you two women.’

I tried firmness. ‘Elijah Smith, you cannot go out on one of your appointments when your mother has just arrived after not seeing you for months, and her husband dead, and, you can’t …’

‘I’m not off on an appointment,’ he said, ‘I’m off to The Bleeding Heart.’

‘Elijah …’

‘Oh stop beefing, woman. I’ll be back later.’ And he left.

We had a small settee that we had bought on the never-never not long after we’d moved in. I sank down onto it and knew I was about to cry. I wept often when I was carrying. I was bewildered by Lijah’s behaviour. How could he be so rude to his own mother? It shocked me, that he was capable of treating someone like that. It was a side of him I’d not seen before. And what would I say to her? I would have to make some excuse for him. I could hardly say he had gone down the pub.

I was still sitting there in some disarray when I heard a light tread on the stair. Elijah’s mother was making her way down, slowly. The stairs came straight into the sitting room so I was able to observe the last few steps of her descent. Her little booted feet were pressed sideways against each stair. She was holding up her skirts with one hand and clutching the rail tightly with the other, as if she had never used stairs before.

She stood before me. She had removed her hat and the fox fur
and I could now take a close look at her old-fashioned mourning dress, which had pleats down the front and puff sleeves with lace, like on a child’s dress. I was about to rise and offer her a cup of tea but something in her strange look kept me pinned to the settee. She was staring at me as if she was trying to see beyond my face, to what was inside, my secret thoughts.

Then she said, ‘Ee’s gone down the pub, I s’pose.’ She had a thick Fenland accent.

Had she been eavesdropping on us? I am ashamed to say that more tears sprung to my eyes as I nodded. I felt humiliated, all of a sudden, as if it was my fault Elijah was off down The Bleeding Heart, as if she was judging me for being unable to keep my husband in the house.

Her eyes narrowed, became two pin-pricks, and I suddenly remembered the hostile stare she had given me the very first time I had seen Elijah sitting on the step of their wagon.

‘You’ve married my son,’ she said evenly, ‘and you’ll sup sorrow by the spoonful ’til the day you die.’

She went back up the stairs.

It was not what you’d call a good start, I suppose.

What was extraordinary to me was that the next day, Elijah and his mother behaved as if there had been nothing odd in either her sudden appearance or his reaction to it – as if it was quite normal for people to drop in and out of each other’s lives with hardly a word.

She had not reappeared the previous evening and eventually I went to bed alone, presuming she would look after herself in the tiny box room next to ours. She had closed the door and, after her pronouncement, I was far too timid to knock on it to enquire if she needed anything.

Elijah returned some time in the night. He had been drinking ale, which always made him snore. I was finding it difficult to sleep, so
lay awake most of the night, heaving myself from one side to the next every now and then when my position became uncomfortable. I finally dropped off not long before dawn, and within minutes was awoken by the sound of creaking on the stairs. I started awake – each of my pregnancies gave me wild nightmares and I frightened easily. My first reaction was to shake Elijah and tell him there was an intruder in the house, but then I remembered his mother. What on earth was she doing up at that hour?

In the morning, I left Elijah where he was, pulled my shawl over my nightdress and clambered carefully down the stairs. I slipped on Elijah’s boots over my bed socks and let myself out the back door, shuffling down the path to the privvy. The night-soil man had been, thank God. He didn’t always do his duty, and the smell out the backs of the houses if he missed our street was quite unbearable. I let myself into the privvy.

As I came out, I let the wooden door swing shut behind me. A blackbird was sitting on the bare twig of a nearby bush. The banging of the door made it take flight. I shuddered with cold and turned to shuffle back up the path – and then I got a right old fright.

Elijah’s mother was squatting on her heels by our small vegetable patch. She was smoking a thin clay pipe and staring at me, puffing on the pipe by pursing and unpursing her lips in short, sharp movements but otherwise as motionless as a garden ornament.

I saw myself through her eyes – a huge woman in a nightie with wild red hair, her bed socks round her fat ankles and her husband’s unlaced boots on her feet. I hurried back inside.

When the kettle was on the stove, I went back upstairs and dressed noisily, to wake Elijah. I was damned if I was breakfasting alone with his sprite of a mother.

It started that first day. After breakfast, the silence broken only by a casual remark about the weather or a horse, she got to her feet
and picked up our dirty plates. I had only just sat down after serving us all, but I jumped to my feet instantly. ‘Do sit down …’ I hesitated over what to call her. I didn’t know her name. ‘Mother, please. I can do that.’ At the word
mother,
I thought I saw her and Elijah exchange a glance.

Either way, she ignored me, taking the plates over to the sink and placing them in. Then she turned and cleared away our cups, including mine, which still had some tea in it.

‘Had enough, Lijah?’ she said.

‘Yes, thank you,’ he replied meekly. He stood.

‘Right then,’ she replied, as she began to unbutton her sleeves. ‘You’d better be off, then, and let me and your wife here get on with our chores.’

I stared at him.

‘Right you are,’ he said, and turned away without meeting my gaze.

‘I’ll wash these things,’ Elijah’s mother said. ‘Now, this is your bowl for dishes, isn’t it?’

‘It’s my bowl for everything,’ I said. We lived in a house scarcely wider than the wagon she was used to. Did she think I had a scullery or washroom?

She stared at me. ‘You’ve buckets I can take outside when I do the laundry, I hope.’

The
laundry?

‘Yes, Mother, we have buckets, but you’ll not be wanting to wring cloths outside in this weather.’

She drew breath, blew it out slowly through pursed lips, shook her head and turned back to the sink.

If it hadn’t been for Lilly, I am not sure how I would have got through those first few weeks. Elijah’s mother was the most peculiar person I had ever met. Her ways were beyond me. Each afternoon, I would escape to Lilly’s bedside and tell her of the latest
antic. ‘And yesterday, she served up some potatoes and she had not put any cabbage in gravy on my plate and it took me all my courage to say something to her and do you know what she said?’

‘Go on …’

‘She snapped at me,
it’s bad luck for a woman in your condition to eat anything green.
And that was it! I’m not allowed to eat cabbage in my own house.’ I’d never liked cabbage much anyway, but that wasn’t the point.