To this day, I’ll never know if my Dadus knew what he was doing. He was getting on a bit by then, but even a man who’s going a bit strange in his head knows what he’s doing when he tells another man it’s all right to walk his daughter down the lane.
Well, we had to take Lijah with us, otherwise there would have been an almighty scandal, but of course we were only just beyond the camp when Lijah ran on ahead and had soon disappeared round several corners, and there was a mighty silence between us then as it was the first time we had been alone together.
Eventually, we talked a bit about the
vardo,
and he said, ‘Of course, you’ll see when you come next, as I’ve done quite a lot since you last came by.’ That was a bit pointed, and led to a little more silence between us.
I thought to myself as we walked, I must be honest with this man, for he deserves a pretty young girl who will be a full wife to him and give him a dozen children. There is score of them at least back in that camp who would be happy to do it. I knew that I could not allow him to have any hopes of me, but in truth it broke my heart, for I knew then he would leave off thinking of me and it had been a nice feeling, the past few weeks; to be a-walking round thinking on someone else who was maybe thinking on me. There were plenty of girls waiting for him. Word had got round-the camp about our visits to him and I’d seen the way they looked at me and thought me fortunate to have his attentions when I already had another man’s child like a millstone around my neck. But it was not fair on the man to lead him a dance, so as we walked along that lane, I said to him, casual like, ‘I do feel right sorry for Delilah with those sixteen children round her neck and it makes me more than ever certain that one of them is enough for me.’ I was talking of a Heron woman we both knew of who was in the habit of having twins and had three sets of them as well as a load of others. She was something famous in that camp, for not only had she had so many, they had all stayed alive.
There was yet more silence between us for a few paces after that, and in that silence I thought I could hear the heavy tread of his boots on the path a little heavier, for you know how it is when a quietness gives one sound a certain weight.
I knew he would not speak, for I could sense he was a little flummoxed. So, I continued. ‘Not that I am saying I do not love my Lijah, he is everything to me, for all the trouble that he causes. He is all the man I shall ever be in need of.’ All I needed from Adolphus was one sign or word to say that he had understood me, but he refused to be provoked.
I saw there was nothing for it but plain speaking, for I could not conclude this walk until I was certain I had released him from any obligation to me. He would be on my conscience else. ‘Which is why I have always thought it best not to marry.’
At this, as if to prevent further declarations, he burst out, ‘But a child is not the same as a husband, Clementina!’
I kept looking straight ahead as we walked, for I knew he would be bright red in the face and be trying not to be, and I thought of how my Lijah always goes red at certain times as well, and I ached inside at the thought of losing Adolphus Lee and all the goodness inside him. He could be Lijah’s father, I thought. Why should he not be?
And what when he asks of you what a husband always asks of his wife?
‘Aye, you be right there,’ I said bitterly. ‘A husband asks for a certain thing a child would not, and a child grows up and leaves you and stops asking but a husband is always there and always asking.’ I could not have been more plain if I had stopped in the middle of the path, taken up a stick and drawn a picture in the dirt.
Again a silence between us and again the tramping of his boots. Even the birds seemed to have stopped singing in honour of the business being decided between Clementina Smith and Adolphus Lee.
‘What if you were to have a husband who never asked?’
There was no silence then, for I could not hold back from letting out a little, scornful yelp. ‘No such man exists upon this earth. Any girl will tell you that.’
And at that Adolphus Lee stopped dead in the path. And I had to stop too, a few paces on, but I could not bring myself to turn and look at him, for I was allowing love for him to creep into my heart and it was hurting me. It was hurting like the pain you get in your side when you have been running too fast, and I even pressed one hand against my ribcage to prevent it, breathing hard. I did not want him to see my face. He would guess at it.
He spoke to my back. ‘He does, Clementina.’ Then his voice became a whisper. ‘I swear, he does.’
It was too much for me. I could not stand that happiness was being offered to me, for I was so used to the lack of it. Without looking back, I gathered my skirts and ran off, calling out for Lijah.
*
That evening, the folk in the next
vardo
called us over as they had some boiled bacon. Way it was back then, all us Smiths tended to pull up together, as if we were our own a-little-bit-separate camp. We was close to the Herons but not so much to the Lees and the Boswells as to be honest I think they thought not-so-much of us. Sabina Smith had said would I do the leeks to go-with, and of course I said yes, so I had a pile of leek rings in a great skillet, the green mixed in with the white, all soft and slippery with butter, and I took them over, and everyone was in a right good mood. Things had not been so good lately but here we all were with some boiled bacon and leeks and fried bread to go with, and soon the men were full as anything and the children were running round.
This was the best bit of life back then, when the men and children were happy and fed, and you got to sit down and light a clay pipe with the other woman knowing that just for a few moments nobody expected you to do anything.
Sabina Smith and myself were quite close at that time and we
had shared a pipe of an evening often enough. She piled up the tin plates and gave them to her three girls to take down to the stream and settled herself down on a tree stump with her skirts spread around her.
I squatted next to her, poking the fire with a stick.
Sabina nodded after her girls. ‘Jeppy’s a woman now, just this morning.’
All at once, I felt I could not bear Sabina, or her Jeppy, and I thought how I would like to take the hot stick and poke it in her ear.
‘Aye?’ I said.
‘When it happened to me, my mother gave me a slap, and when I said why did you hit me she said, you’re a woman now and you’ve got to get used to what a woman’s life is like.’
Sabina was like this, always wanting to talk about what it was like being a woman.
She must’ve expected me to join in with some such story but I wasn’t in the mood to talk about things like that and I thought why is it some people need to be a-talking all the time, and what is it with us folk? Here’s Sabina telling me her secrets, and Jeppy’s into the bargain, and she’s telling me like no one else is listening, but she knows that anything said will be known by all the women in the camp tomorrow, as that’s the way it is.
I suddenly felt how I was not-liking our sort of life so much. Do
gorjer
women do this, I thought? Probably not, as they have a wall and some air and then another wall between them. And I fell to thinking how there might be times when it was nice to have walls to shut out other people.
I had not often thought like this before and it was strange I should think such thoughts that evening, with boiled bacon inside me. The men happy and fiddling, dinner done – this was usually the best of it. And I felt sad thinking how nothing was right for me at that moment. All I wanted was to be away from it all, and Sabina and her gossiping. I wanted to be on my own.
It was a bad thing in our life, to want to be on your own, for we had only got along by helping each other – and fighting each other as well, if the moment came. But to want to be away from other people, well that was thought of as something not right. And I thought wistful-like of Adolphus and how often he was working alone on his
vardo.
And it came to me. The
vardo
was an excuse. He could have married years ago – many a man does before he has his own wagon. He hadn’t married because he didn’t want to be married, no more than I did.
Sabina’s sister Evadina joined us and that got me off the hook a bit. She had pickled some nasturtiums but I hadn’t had them with the bacon as I like them best in a sauce.
*
It rained overnight. The next day, I gathered my skirts in both hands and picked my way clear of the puddles and walked to the far side of the camp, right through it rather than round it, so as many people as liked could see which way I was going.
Adolphus Lee had pulled the covers from his
vardo
and hung them from a bit of rope strung between two trees. He had a fire lit. He glanced at me as I approached but I couldn’t tell if his look meant anything.
‘Did the damp get in, then?’ I asked him, nodding at the covers.
‘No, they held.’
As he said it, one of the ropes loosed from where he had tied it and one of the covers slipped with a sighing noise to the ground. Together, we went over and lifted it, one side each.
‘This one’s dry already,’ I said. ‘We might as well fold it.’
We held a side each, arms wide, and walked together.
When it was folded, Adolphus turned to the
vardo
and said, ‘I’ve to decide on the windows.’
‘I like sash,’ I said.
I saw him hesitate. Sash windows are a wee bit heavier than
other sorts and every ounce counts when you’re going uphill. He was the kind of man to weigh such a thing.
He looked at me. ‘Sash it is, then,’ he said.
And things between us were agreed.
*
We had twelve years together, myself and Adolphus Lee. He was as good as a father to Lijah, as good as my Dadus had been before he came along.
Dadus passed away during that time, and I don’t know how I would’ve managed that without Adolphus or what would have become of me and Lijah. Dadus had been a broken fella ever since we lost Dei but it still hurt me terrible when he went. I think perhaps I am not so good at the letting-go of people.
I let go of my Adolphus easiest of all. I think the truth was, he always loved me more than I loved him, and that gave me a nice safe feeling, and he bequeathed that to me after he was gone. He clutched his chest one evening and went to bed early.
But I am getting things out of order. I said yes to Adolphus Lee, and in the twelve years we were together he never gave me cause to regret it. Twelve years – how many nights is that? He kept his promise for every one. We never talked about it. You didn’t talk about things back then. Nowadays, people go on about it all the time, as if it’s the only thing that matters. That side of life is over-thought-of, in my opinion. People talk as if it is all, and it is not.
L
et me tell you a small story about dead people. Us Travelling folk do not like to talk about them much. Some people think that a dead person cannot help but think ill of the living and that is how a ghost is always evil. Some think it is bad luck even to say someone’s name once they’re dead. But I have not altogether agreed with that. I like to think on the dead.
There would be many of our type who would never have taken up the vicar’s offer of the cottage in the graveyard at Werrington. There would be many who would rather have slept in a bed of nettles. But I am thinking that it is one thing to be prejudiced against the dead for a good reason, a-Travelling, and another when you are settled and a dead person is not such a problem. Let the
gorjers
have their
mul
ladipovs,
with their holes in the ground full of ghosts, good and bad. Is that any worse than to be a soul a-wandering all the time?
You can tell I am a little unusual for my type and of course I did end up in a house by the Corporation Depot, but let me tell you there are plenty of worse places to end.
Lijah was born at a time when little children died often. Rich or poor, Traveller or
gorjer,
made no difference. If there was sickness in a village it could come a-knocking any time. Of course, it stood a better chance of getting in if you were poor.
That whole time I was carrying Lijah and we were living in the cottage in the graveyard, we would see them, the secret burials. They always happened at night. We would hear the creak of the cemetery gate, the turning of the handcart wheels on the gravel path. We would go to the door to watch. Past our cottage they would come, the vicar leading, praying as he came. Behind him would be a poor family, sobbing and sobbing, pushing the handcart with a little dead child wrapped in cloth and lying on it.
They were the worst off of the parish, folk who could not afford a plot or a gravestone of their own. They must have begged the vicar to put their little one in Holy Ground and he had found a way to do it. Him and his sexton together, they opened up a grave, in the dark, and put the little child on top and closed it up again. They opened up the graves in no particular order, as far as I could see, whoever they belonged to. They just worked their way along the rows.
After the first time we saw it happen, the vicar came over to us afterwards and gave us a coin not to say a word to anyone. We took the coin, of course, but it upset my Dadus. When they were gone and we were back inside, he said, didn’t they realise that if they kept opening up the ground then the
mullas,
the ghosts, would be getting up and walking abroad? He thought it wasn’t good for me to see it in my condition. My unborn child would be cursed.
But the next time we heard the creak of the gate and the turn of the wheels on the gravel, we still went to the door to watch, peering in the dark. I know it sounds peculiar, but I found something comforting in it. I thought it was good that these poor little children should not be put in the cold earth by themselves but should rest in the arms of someone, even if it was a stranger. And maybe it was
nice for the folk already in their graves, lying there alone for all eternity, to be joined by a little girl or boy who would keep them company. I thought it a nice thing.
I can’t rightly think what it was made me think of that story. I was about to start telling you of her.
*
We were picking sour cherries. It was fine work. It was a huge estate we were on, owned by a farmer who went by the name of Childer. He always used Travellers to pick his cherries so we saw the same folk year in year out and whole families would go out together. You would go and take your basket from the shed with a strap to put over and then when it was filled you would go and get it weighed. Some people would complain about the cherry picking, about what hot work it was and how the strap across your shoulders would chafe and your hip would ache once the basket started getting full. But I liked it. I liked the freshness of it. I liked the staining of the fingers and the testing of a fruit, a small tug to see if it was ripe enough. Even the darkest ones were not ready sometimes and resisted, and I liked the way that everyone knew to leave a not-ready fruit undamaged so that in a day or two someone else would get the benefit of it.
And, of course, there was no danger that sour cherries would get eaten up the way sometimes happened with apples or strawberries. It would be a man and a half ate more than a fistful of sour cherries. The most I ever managed was one, at dawn. The picking started at first light and a single sour cherry would always wake me up. You could eat a box of lemons easier.
Sour cherries. That is how came she came into our lives.
*
Rose Childer. She was the farmer’s stepdaughter. I found out she was only a stepdaughter later on, of course. At the time, all we knew’d is that every Friday evening the farmer’s daughter came around the wagons collecting the rent. She did it then as we had all
just been paid. She had a leather bag slung over her shoulder, and everyone knew this big farmer’s girl as she had bright red hair like a cloud about her head. She tied it back in a velvet ribbon, but it was that soft, frizzing sort of hair that would not stay tied and floated round her.
We was all right nice to her, of course. We knew’d which side our bread was buttered. She would come along of a summer evening and go from
vardo
to
vardo
and it was always the women who would deal with her, straightening from their fires and wiping their hands on their aprons. ‘Why it’s young Miss Rose …’ they would say with great, beamy smiles. ‘Will you stop and have a cup of tea with us?’
Mostly she would say, ‘Thank you kindly, but no, I must get round,’ or some such, but once in a while someone would persuade her to stop and then out would come the china teacup which would only be given to a
gorjer
guest and the children would come and stand around with fingers in their mouths. Once, I even saw her pull a Boswell boy onto her lap and tickle him until he ran off. And most of the other women fell for it right enough and said, ‘That farmer’s daughter is decent enough for a
gorjer
girl.’ As if they were forgetting we were all so nice to her because we wanted to stay the right side of Childer.
The men would always make themselves scarce, of course. No man who ever stared at a
gorjer
girl would find himself forgiven by his wife, so they took their hungry looks off elsewhere and it was us women dealt with young Miss Rose. She wasn’t so young, in fact. She must have been past twenty and should have been long wed, in my opinion. She wore white blouses with lots of pleats in them that blossomed round her. Her skirts were wide too. The ribbons in her hair were always smart looking but she had great big open boots, farm girl’s boots, fit for striding round a
gipsy
camp.
I have always had dainty little feet myself and whenever I could
I made a show of them in pointy lace-ups, even if the weather was not quite fit for it.
*
My Lijah was gifted at many things but fruit picking was not one of them. He was magical with the horses, mind, and made a tidy living out of the buying and fixing and selling of them when he was older. And he could fashion anything out of wood or metal. He had not been with Adolphus and myself for the first part of the summer as he had been down at Stow. Then he joined us back up at the Fens and set to making pegs and cutting boards. He had an idea to carve patterns around the edges of the boards as he said it was a thing a
gorjer
housewife used several times a day in her kitchen and a nice-looking one would fly out of a hawker’s basket. I said to him it was no use if he was going to be a pack-man that summer as they would be too heavy to carry in any number. And he said how he was a planning on getting hold of a knife-grinding barrow and would build a special basket on the side to keep the boards in and would sell the boards when he’d sharpened the knives. I could tell he was pleased with the poetry in this.
Anyroad, it was because of his plans to sell the cutting boards that he was by the
vardo
that evening. He had come back with some blocks of wood a little earlier and set them down by the step. I had taken the horse from him and said I would rub it down. We had a nice little bay at that time, quiet and cobbish, with a fine amount of feather. I was fond of it. We called him Kit.
I had taken Kit over to the shade beneath the trees for tethering, watered him and stroked his nose. I liked to feel the bone beneath. I was walking back towards the
vardo
with the bucket, when I heard voices.
As I came around the front, they fell silent. She was standing in front of him, looking down. The sun was behind her. He was looking up, and he had a look on his face that I had never seen before. He was holding a knife in one hand and a block of wood in the other.
I waited for them both to start at the sight of me, but instead, the farmer’s daughter looked at me calmly, gave a half-smile, then reached into her leather bag and got out her pencil and notebook.
Lijah went back to his carving.
I gave her the money and finished with the bucket and did a few other things and then I came and tended the fire. Miss Rose moved on to the next
vardo.
Lijah was intent on his cutting board.
I took an iron and turned the logs. ‘You might’ve turned this before,’ I said. ‘We’ll need it high if we’re to eat before nightfall.’
He did not look at me, just carried on, which was a thing he commonly did as a boy and young man and it always made me mad as anything.
‘That’s if you can bring yourself to think of anything as ordinary as supper.’ I said, rising.
*
After we’d ate that evening, Adolphus said how he was going to lie down a bit. He’d been doing that a lot lately, feeling slow and poorly of an evening. His bigness had turned to fatness and he often looked bad around the stomach, as if the insides of him was bursting to get out and his skin was tight with it. I was a little worried about him, for to my mind he was not yet old enough to be getting slow and pained in that way.
Lijah rose as well and said, ‘I’m off to take Kit into town, Dei.’
Well, that was like a red rag to a bull. I knew’d what he was up to. All the young lads had taken to it recently, visiting the public houses in the town a few miles off where they weren’t known and coming back all hours even when most of them had to be up before sunrise. Lijah was the worst of it, for a hawker keeps his own hours. I could not stand the thought that he liked a drink from time to time. Neither my Dadus or my Adolphus ever drank and I knew’d not how it had begun, this habit of his.
‘That horse has done enough work for one day and you’ve enough to keep you busy round here,’ I said sharply.
He turned and snarled, ‘Leave it, Dei!’ before snatching his coat and hat from the peg and striding off.
I was ashamed that he should talk to me like that in front of Adolphus.
Adolphus did his best. ‘Shall I go after him?’ he asked, knowing what I would say.
‘You’re not well,’ I snapped, and turned away, and then felt bad that I had been unpleasant to Adolphus only on account of Lijah being unpleasant to me.
*
I heard him come back later. He was bumping around beneath the
vardo,
where he always slept in summer. It was black as black outside, so I knew’d it was late. Once, he had come back so lathered he had forgot to tether Kit but that horse never wandered off. It had more sense than the lot of us. I turned beneath the eider, enough to make the
vardo
’s boards creak so Lijah below would hear me and know I was awake. Next to me, Adolphus was breathing softly.
In the morning, at first light, I was woked up by Lijah whistling to himself. By the time I had got down from the wagon, he had blow’d on the embers of the fire and got it flaring up and was heating the kettle. He grinned at me and clapped his hands together. ‘I reckon you’d like a cup of tea before you’re off to strip another of those cherry trees, wouldn’t you, Dei?’
Perhaps he isn’t such a bad lad after all, I thought to myself.
*
He stayed cheerful all the rest of that month. And though he went off to town drinking a lot he was never sore and silent in the mornings like he had been before. He made a whole pile of cutting boards and they were stacking up but he said he had a few other things to be getting on with before he hired the knife-grinding barrow. We started to talk about where we should move on to once the harvest was done. In years before, we had stuck around that site for a while and just earned the rent by other means, but some
of us weren’t so sure that Childer would be on for letting us do that again, so the talk was all of whether we could persuade him round or not.
That was how come Delender Lee said to me one day by the stream, in front of a whole bunch of other women, ‘Course, Clementina, what we need is for your Lijah to put in a good word for us in high places and we’ll all be fine, won’t we?’
I looked at her. One of the other women muttered, ‘Low places, more like …’ and there was a whole load of smirking and looking down went on.
That was the worst of it. If they had all burst out laughing out loud I could have laughed too and pretended I knew all about it. But the fact that they looked down and just glanced at each other meant not only did they know, they knew that I didn’t.
I gathered up my wet things and threw them into the tub even though I was only halfway through. I picked up the tub and left without a word. I suppose I should have just ignored it but I couldn’t carry on washing clothes with them after that. I felt their gazes on my back, and their exchanged looks as I climbed back up the rise to walk back to the camp, and as I crossed the field I had to bite my lip to stop my eyes watering with shame.
*
I knew I had to tackle Lijah. For what sort of mother would I have been if I had just ignored it and let him make himself a laughing stock? I must do it right away, I thought, before I lose my nerve.