‘Come on, now,’ I said. ‘What are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? Most girls your age were wed with babbies when I was young.’
‘I’m thirteen, Mami.’
‘Oh well, even so…’ I pushed the biscuit tin towards her. ‘Here, take another to have on the way home.’
She shook her head, then stood. She looked at the little doll, then let it drop on to my kitchen table. ‘You have it, Mami. Maybe you can fix it up as a present for Scarlet some time. She hasn’t seen it yet. You could make it look nice.’
I wanted to say,
it won’t always be this bad, you know, Billy. Some day, you might have a real piece of luck and then you won’t always feel like the nice things in life happen to other people.
I couldn’t say that, of course, as I didn’t know if it were true.
At the door, she turned. ‘Mum wouldn’t have let me anyway, would she?’ she said, and the bitterness in her voice was as clear as church bells ringing.
I shook my head.
She went back to the pig’s head that was stinking out the back yard.
*
Not long after that, Mehitable took my advice and started to become a young lady. That didn’t improve relations with her mother any. Rose had a bit of difficulty in recognising that her first three were getting grown up, I reckon. Daniel left school and started his apprenticeship. Mehitable cut her hair short and made herself blouses on her mother’s sewing machine – she was all for getting herself a position as a maid in a big house, if she could find anyone who would take her with that leg of hers. Bartholomew was still at school but played truant like the devil and took beer with his breakfast, just like his dad. You didn’t need to look at the palm of his hand to see which way he was going. Barty-boy, my Barty-boy, what can I say of him? What he was like as a boy is all wiped out by what came later. Broke his mother’s heart.
Fenella grew into a beauty. The boys would fight each other to carry her things for her. She was a fashion-plate.
Scarlet, tough as old boots. My baby.
*
I still liked my little place. I had got it just how I wanted. I didn’t miss being on the road at all, although I never closed my front door unless it was really freezing. What I loved most was waking in the night and having that strange moment you have when you wake unexpectedly, the odd not-knowingness of where you are – or even who you are. Then it comes to you.
My name is Clementina Lee, widow, and I am living in a little house on the edge of a village called Sutton-in-the-Isle, west of Ely
.
And I would think,
the strangeness of ending up here. During all the things that were happening to me in all the years previous. Here was waiting for me, all along
.
I would shift in my bed, turn my head and open my eyes, gazing through my open door from where I lay, at the whole expanse of
here
out there. The dark outside, the whole of the Fens stretching, lying flat and quiet …
This is what it must be like to be the King of Russia
,
I sometimes thought,
as if the world was only made for you to inhabit it, and all the other people in it are different parts of you
.
If it was a clear night, I could lie and watch the stars.
Sometimes I would just drift off back to sleep, all calm and quiet, thinking about the stars. And sometimes I would rise from my bed and pull on my boots and shawl and go outside. Some nights I would sit on my doorstep and smoke a pipe, but on others I would go for a little walk in the darkness, just a little wander around, not because I needed to particularly but because it was right nice to do it, maybe to pretend I was the King of Russia, or maybe for no reason at all.
*
It was on one of those nights, on one of my walks, that I had a strange encounter with my son. I had woken before dawn, as usual. It was pitch black outside – it must’ve been a cloudy night for it
was completely starless and I could hardly see a thing. Nights like that were good. You felt the ground beneath your feet more better when it was all you had to go on.
I stood on my step for a minute, closed my eyes and breathed in deep, as I liked to do. Glory be to
Mi
Duvvel,
I thought. The air feels good inside your lungs when it isn’t shared with
gorjers.
Having the air to myself. That was why I went out at night.
I turned up the lane, to do my usual circuit of the village. There was something right pleasant about going round the houses when all else was asleep. Sometimes there’d be a workman out and about and it always annoyed me terrible if I bumped into one of them – like they was interfering with me. I would never greet them, and I daresay word had got round the village that I was a queer old boot, which suited me just fine. It kept fools away and was good for business.
What I liked most was how even though the sky seemed pitch dark, the shapes of the trees would be even darker against it. It reminded me there were lots of different sorts of darkness in the world and that was a good thing. It meant that however much you knew, there was always something else beyond – and if there isn’t anything beyond, then what would be the point?
Within a few paces, I would pass Lijah’s cottage, and I always glanced that way, of course. That night, before I even neared it, I knew my Lijah was up and about. I could see the glow of a little flame. I spotted it as I came down my step. He was sitting on his doorstep, lighting his pipe.
The flame went out – if I’d walked by a minute later I wouldn’t have known he was there.
The shape of him became him as I got close.
I didn’t speak or anything. I just came and squatted down next to him, and wished I had my pipe with me too.
There was a long silence between us, while we both looked out at the dark.
‘Thing is,’ he said after a while. ‘I haven’t forgotten how she was.’
I said nothing.
‘Might be a bit easier if I did, like.’
There was another long silence.
‘Like when we went to the fair, just after we was wed. We walked around together, and I could see the other fellas looking at her, and then looking at me, for none of them had her on their arm, but I did.’
A wave of honesty came over me, and I wanted to cry out, but it’s never been right for you, Lijah. What did you have to go off and marry a
gorjer
girl for?
When gorjers’ merripen and Romanichals’ merripen ven kitanee, kerk kosto merripen see
,
you should know that. Why didn’t you stick with your own kind, for heaven’s sake?
And you might not have your five fine grandchildren then, missus. What of that? Mrs Pure Adolphus Lee, Clementina Smith as was, Little Lemmy – let’s wish the done undone, shall we? Let’s wish you hadn’t taken that journey in the mud – you wouldn’t even have your Lijah then.
Fortunately, I am quite good at ignoring the voices in my head when they talk inconvenient.
It didn’t matter what the truth of it was, really, for I knew I could never say anything to him against his Rosie. He had fallen for her, good and proper, all those years ago back on the farm, and whatever his faults had been as a husband I was certain no other girl had turned his head since. She was his Rosie, pure and simple, and it wasn’t my place to interfere. All I could do was keep my mouth shut.
‘And there was one time when she was holding Dan and talking to him soft, when he was little, and he was holding on to her hair with his fists. She looked right fine that day.’
He would never have spoken like this in the daylight. It was like he was saying it to the darkness, like I wasn’t there at all.
He tapped his pipe against the step. ‘She don’t like me, Dei. She used to, but she don’t any more. Hasn’t done for years.’
I suppose that was the moment I could have said something, but
I was that worried of saying the wrong thing that I didn’t speak at all.
‘This ’baccy’s a bit damp,’ he said. He had pushed it down with his finger and was trying to relight it. I rose from the step.
*
The warning signs were there, looking back.
I can remember, in East Cambridge, sitting of an evening, on one of the few evening when Lijah chose to grace us with his presence. He would bring home news-sheets, sometimes, that he had lifted from somewhere, and he would give them to Rose and say, ‘Go on, Rosie, read to us. Read to us about the S’ara desert.’ I do believe he would have gone there himself to see what it was all about if he knew where it was.
*
And then there was that time me and him took little Scarlet out blackberry picking.
It was right warm that day. I can’t remember what the others were up to but it was just the three of us. We were standing next to the hedgerow at the far end of the lane, just where it petered out into a fallow field. It was a hot day. I was gathering the berries from the top of the bush and Lijah was helping Scarlet collect them from the bottom branches, the ones she could reach.
Lijah had his favourite stick, the old, gnarled one that was worn dark and smooth. He was holding back the lower branches so that Scarlet could reach some of the blackberries inside the bush without pricking her fat little arms. He was being right good about it, as he would have done with any of the girls (not the boys, mind you) for he was pretending how he hadn’t spotted the best clusters.
I was having to lean over them to pick mine, and was feeling a little cross on account of how it was taking a long time and I had jobs to do back home.
‘Have a look in there, petal,’ Lijah said to Scarlet. ‘I can’t see anything. I don’t think there is anything in there.’
Scarlet bent and peered into the bush, then cried gleefully, ‘Yes, there is, Dad! I can see them!’
‘No!’ he replied, in mock astonishment. ‘There’s no blackberries in there … never in a million years.’
Scarlet reached in and pulled out a few blackberries, already squashy in her hot little fist and not much use for anything but jam, they were that mashed. She held them up to me, with a look of triumph. ‘Look what Dad and I have founded, Mami!’
She was that proud of herself. ‘Well done, Scarlet. That’s wonderful, that is,’ I said. ‘Now you put them in this tin here and I think we’d best be off home.’
On the way back they walked ahead a little, holding hands. I trailed behind with the half-full tin. The sun was beating down that day and I had on my dress that was a bit tight around the arms and on the itchy side.
I heard Scarlet say to Lijah, ‘Dad, where did you get that stick from?’
‘Ah,’ he said, and I did not need to see his face to know the expression on it, ‘well you might ask …’
Behind them, I rolled my eyes.
‘This stick, this here stick? I got this stick in the S’ara Desert!’
Scarlet’s voice was full of wonder. ‘Did you really, Dad? When was that, Dad?’
‘
Lijah
…’ I muttered from behind, but he took no notice of me.
‘Why, Little One, that was when I went off to war, before you was born. I was off a-fighting against the Boers what was trying to steal Africa from us …’
The signs were there. I should’ve known what was coming.
*
We had been living in the village for some years then and was well established, if you know what I mean. What I mean is, I don’t think there was anyone who took against us, in particular, and I had got quite friendly with some of the other Old Folks. There were a few
Old Folks lived in our row as there was several little places like mine too small for anything but widows or widowers. At the far end of the row was Mrs Canning, quite a posh
rawnie
fallen on hard times. Her father had owned a jeweller’s shop, she told me once. She didn’t have any side to her, though, considering she was used to being quite high up in life. She was just a poor old
pivli
rawnie
like the rest of us now.
She and me shared a smoke sometimes, sitting on her step if the weather was fine. She was much more up to date with what was going on in the world than me, was Edie Canning. She read the local paper, every week.
Sometimes I would say to her, ‘So, what’s up with the world, then?’ and she would tell me how they were going to stop opening the library in Ely on Saturday afternoons and it was a disgrace as that was the only time the working men could get there and improve themselves. Last Thursday, Robert Cooter from Windmill Lane had chased his wife down the street with a rolling pin. Now there was a man who needed improving.
It was Edie Canning told me about the
Bell-jums.
They were a brave people, she said, but extremely small. She had met one, once. They wore tall hats to try and make themselves look bigger but not so’s it would fool you. They ate nothing but bread and ham.
The Germans, they was different, mind. They were big fellas, and they ate twice as much as the Bell-jums and they had a hundred different sorts of cheeses. They were very cruel to their animals. When a horse got lame, they would beat it to death and then leave it to rot by the side of the road. Edie Canning’s nephew had been to Germany and seen it happening with his own eyes.
I was shocked when she told me that. I thought the Germans probably had what was coming to them, if that’s the sort of folk they were.
*
It seemed to me that all my life I had been able to not-think about the world. Lijah said to me once, ‘Have you never wanted to go and see the sights of London, Dei?’ and I said, ‘What for? I’ve been to Thetford.’ The Fens were world enough for me. They stretched as far as the eye could see, which is quite far enough to my way of thinking.
What I didn’t realise was that if you don’t go out and visit the world, it doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, the world comes to visit you.
*
When the War started, a lot of the local lads rushed off, of course – the young ones, the ones who couldn’t wait to get out of the village. But a fair few of the older men held back. The men who had children knew what leaving those children might mean. The high-ups knew it too. When they had killed off the first lot of volunteers, they brought in the Bachelor Bill, as it was called, and that used up the rest of the unmarried ones pretty sharpish, so it was only a matter of time before they started on the husbands.