Stone Cradle Page 2
*
He was trouble from the beginning, was Lijah. I know how people like to say how it was growing up without a father but he had fathers right enough, had them coming out his ears by the time I’d finished with him. No, he was a right bugger from the start.
*
We were not cottage-dwellers by nature at that time, oh no. When I fell pregnant with Lijah, we were living in our wagon on the green, alongside the others. There were four families altogether. There was my cousins, and some other Smiths they knew, and the Greys with the husband as fat as a pig who took the bed-box all to himself and made his wife sleep on the grass outside with her eight young ’uns. We weren’t keen on them, the Greys, but Redeemus Grey was good at finding work and so we’d found it advantageous to stay with them. There’s something ironic.
The villagers hadn’t bothered us much, so we were quite surprised when the Constabulary came over. They took their hats off, all polite like, and said there’d been a vote or something at the Council and we had to go, and that’s when my Dadus kicked up a bit of a fuss, pointing at me and my belly.
Eventually, the vicar showed up and said there was a cottage at the bottom of his cemetery we could have, just the one room like. Of course, what Dadus was most worried about was our vardo, but after a bit of talk, the vicar said, ‘What if we say your wagon may be parked safely behind the vicarage?’ There was even a field for the horse.
So for all the trouble that belly got me into, it got me and Dei and Dadus moved into a cottage in a graveyard.
*
The others went off, which was just as well. Things had been difficult since I’d started showing. Even before then, everyone knew certain things, and no one was saying anything, and in a little camp like ours there was no getting away from the badness of that.
I’ve seen girls in my kind of trouble put out to walk the highway on their own, but my mother and father stuck by me. Dadus was mad as a bear when Dei first told him, mind you, and called me every name under the sun. But I was his daughter, and he was damned if any other so-and-so was going to call me names as well. So they made it clear, without saying anything to anyone. Yes, their daughter was going to have a baby and, no, there was no husband within a hundred mile, but that was our problem and nobody else’s and anyone who didn’t like it could take it up with my Dadus.
My Dadus was like that, soft and hard at the same time. I think it’s called being a good man.
*
I know rightly what you’re wondering. It’s what everyone wonders in a story like mine. What was the fella what done it? Who was Lijah’s father? Well, you might ask …
*
When you have a babby yourself, you look at your own mother and father in a different light. My Dei was a small woman, even smaller than me, and I remember staring at her as I was nursing Lijah one day and thinking, I can’t believe she did what I did – four times, in total. There was a boy who died firstly, then a girl who was an idiot and they had to give her to the asylum, then me, then another little boy who died when I was small. Four times my Dei did what I did on that gravestone, and only one child to show for it.
My Dei, she was the kind of woman who kept all her suffering locked up inside herself. I never heard her complain once about anything. She had very fine wrists, delicately boned they were, and well-kept hands like a lady. She used to keep a little brass tub with oil in it, which she perfumed with lavender and rubbed into her hands at night before she went to sleep. She took such good care of her hands you might think she was a fine lady or something, instead of a Travelling woman who worked from dawn to dusk her whole life: beautiful hands, but as strong as you like.
I lay on that gravestone after Lijah was born, with him tucked inside my blouse for warmth and the mess that came with him all around me – and I knew that for all the hardness of our stone cradle, all I had to do was wait until my Dei got to me and everything would be all right, and it was.
Four times, my Dei did it, and I knew she carried the ghosts of her three lost babies around with her always, like shadows inside, but she never mentioned them.
After Lijah I knew in my bones that whatever fell upon me in the years to come, I’d never be doing it again. Taken from the outside, then taken from the inside – that was enough for me. I wanted life to be nicer than that.
*
The vicar must have said something in his church when Lijah was born as for a short while his parishioners left meat pies on our doorstep. I can tell you that was the first time such a thing had ever happened to us, then or since. Dordy, it was a bitter winter. I stayed inside nursing my new babby and it was like the world outside had stopped and gone cold and dark because there was no point in it being otherwise until my Lijah was ready to step into it.
But after a while, the pies had stopped coming and we ran out of coal. We had all felt such a wild happiness, the first few weeks. Then the realness of Lijah being with us and no pies and no coal sank in and the tiredness which I hadn’t minded ’til then started to get a bit much and I thought how I had never been inside anywhere as much as I was then. It’s a bad time to have a baby, that time of year. Isn’t natural. All else calves in the spring.
One morning, Dei said, ‘It’s Sunday, now Father why don’t you take me out on that horse round the villages? We need coal for that babby.’
Dadus replied, ‘It’s a mean winter, Mother, no one’ll give us so much as cup of water even it being a Sunday.’
And Dei said, ‘We’ll take the babby then they’ll have to.’
I loved listening to them talking about my baby like that, arguing about what was best for him. I loved the fact that they loved him like I did, that he was parcelled up with love.
I did think my Dadus was right, though, so I said, ‘No, Dei, it’s too cold outside.’
‘Give him a good feed,’ she said, ‘And I’ll wrap him tight and he’ll sleep the whole way round.’
I didn’t like the thought of my Lijah going door-to-door so tiny but he’d been up half the night and I knew she was right about him sleeping if I gave him a bellyful. And I must admit I did think that I could crawl under the blankets and sleep a bit myself as I was still mocadi, you know, Unclean, and Dei wasn’t letting me cook or tidy or anything.
‘You stay wrapped up and we’ll be back before you know it,’ said Dei.
As soon as they were gone, I settled down on my straw mattress all ready to sleep the whole morning, thinking how, in fact, it was a lovely thing to have a few hours to myself for the first time since Lijah was born. I was going to sleep like a log, I told myself.
I should’ve known.
I couldn’t get comfortable. I was so used to Lijah next to me, it seemed strange to be able to move around on the mattress how I liked. Then I started to think of Lijah and wonder if he was all right and think how maybe I shouldn’t have let Dei take him after all and that was a mistake. There was no sleeping then. And even though I’d given him a big feed from both sides before they left, I felt full of milk for him straightaway, and sore, and one side of me seemed a bit hot and hard and Dei had said if you ever get hot and hard you’ve got to feed him until it’s clear otherwise you get a fever. I started to sweat just thinking of it, and I leaked a little which made my blouse damp and I knew I’d never get to sleep then.
I started to imagine all sorts of things happening to Lijah. I thought of Dadus being careless and cantering and Dei falling from the horse. I thought of some gorjer housewife taking a stick to them and not realising there was a newborn babby in my Dei’s arms. What if he needed a feed while they were out? Be quiet, you fool, you fed ’im right enough. He’ll sleep the whole way round the Soke. I rolled over and pulled the eider round my ears, closing my eyes.
We’d had dogs set on us often enough. My son would make a tasty morsel for some old rangy hound.
Soon I was up and out of bed and wrapping a shawl around my shoulders. I knew I couldn’t tarry in the cottage. I would go mad with it.
*
Well, it was far too cold to wander round the village like a bedlamite. So even though it wasn’t wise, there was really only one place I could go.
It was back in the summer that I had first got into the habit of sneaking into the church services. I can’t really say why I started doing it, except I was troubled in my head at that time, for obvious reasons, and it made me feel a bit better. Even before we got given the cottage, we had had some dealings with the vicar who had been good to us. He was a handsome man, tall and straight, white-haired he was, and a kind of peace came over me when I sat there. I suppose it was the only time when I was not with someone else or running errands or some such. It was the only time I could sit and think about things. It is not really done to just sit and think when you’re a Traveller, especially a biti chai like me. Thinking doesn’t get a fire built, nor catch a rabbit to stick on top of it.
I hadn’t been inside the church since Lijah was born, so I felt a little strange as I crossed the cemetery, even though I could hear the service was well under way and knew how to get in without being spotted. I never used the main entrance – the iron door-latch clanged up and down like anything – but there was a little side door that pushed open right easy, so I could sneak down the side and sit at the back, where nobody could see me. From that position, I could watch the gorjers being holy.
I crept to my place, at the end of an empty pew, tucked away behind a pillar. Nobody paid any mind to me. They were all on their feet singing away and a right racket they were making.
Oh, the blood of Jesus,
Oh, the blood of Jesus,
Oh, the blood of Jesus
Cleanses white as snow.
Oh, the blood of Jesus,
Oh, the blood of Jesus,
Oh, the blood of Jesus,
Yes, it cleanses white as snow.
I closed my eyes and listened, and I thought how the hymns always seemed to be on about blood, and it made me think of the blood when Lijah was born and how it seemed clean blood in spite of all the other muck because this beautiful, new thing was coming through the middle of it. And I felt sad, all of a sudden, about how beautiful and new Lijah was, and me being so dirty and sinful, there in the church, and how he deserved a better mother than me. The mud, the coin, the buckle pressed against my cheek. And I found myself wishing things could be different for him, and perhaps he would have been better off if I’d left him on the vicar’s doorstep, for what had he got to look forward to with the life we led? It must have been the lack of sleep made me think like that, for I’m not usually the type to fall to thinking on myself.
The vicar had started his sermon. I listened with my eyes closed, letting the words float about me. When I felt a bit better I opened them and sat up. It was a small church. I couldn’t see the pulpit but I could hear him all right. He had a lovely voice, did that vicar. I’ve long forgot his name but I’ve remembered his voice: deep and soft, like he was going to be good to you.
‘And so, good members of this parish,’ he was saying, ‘we must never forget that in our own lands we too have a heathen tribe among us …’ It was something like that. ‘Long may we dwell upon the vile hordes that afflict the Holy Land. For it is easier, is it not, to look at our neighbour’s garden and see the weeds and bitter fruit therein than to contemplate our own dandelions?’
He’s got a lovely voice but he doesn’t half talk a load of blether, I thought to myself, giving a huge yawn and leaning against the pillar. The villagers were restless, too. I could hear them shuffling, up at the front. From where I sat, I could make out the Freemans. I could not see Thomas among them. I felt a sudden yearning for the life of a maiden, the life I had had before Lijah had befallen me, and left me a woman who would always be a mother of a bastard child whatever else happened. Thomas Freeman would sooner spit at me in the street than smile at me now, I thought. How smug his family would feel; how right in their judgement of me.
‘And so I come to the matter in hand …’ the vicar continued. How warm his voice is, I thought, and closed my eyes, ‘… our very own degraded heathens. I speak, of course, of the roadside Arabs, the gipsies.’
My eyes snapped open.
‘As you will all know, I consider myself something of an expert on this unfortunate race, as we have in our very own churchyard here our own examples, among whom an innocent child has been born. As I was saying last week …’
Later, I decided that it was that particular phrase that hurt me more than anything. As I was saying last week … It was not just bad luck for me to have wandered in there that morning and hear him talk of us in such a way, oh no. He did it all the time.
‘…it is the fate of these unfortunate children which most nearly concerns me, and the charitable trust I advise. Are we really prepared to cast them into the yawning jaws of hell?’ And here, his voice rang like a bell. ‘No, my good Christian fellows!’ At this point, he must have leaned forward or pointed his finger or something, for there was a hush in the church that told me people were actually listening to him. I held my breath. I would have to wait until the next hymn before I crept out, for what should I do if anyone noticed me here?
His voice went back to normal. ‘And so I come to the purpose of today’s collection. You all know well, my friends, my abiding interest in the education of our youth. Before too long, I can report, I will be travelling to the Great Halls of Westminster to give evidence on the necessity of compulsion when it comes to the children of rogues and vagabonds. A truly evangelical mission to raise the monies necessary! As our good Lord himself said when he came upon …’
He was back to the Lord, but I did not need to hear any more. As I was saying last week … How long had he been making these plans? He was probably eyeing up my fat belly before Lijah even popped out of it. All the stories Dei and Dadus had told me about gorjers stealing our children – I’d always thought it was something grown-ups said just to frighten children into being good. As I was saying last week … How long had we got?
I was sweating. It happened when my dugs were full of milk. The back of my neck prickled with it, then felt cold. I was dizzy and leaned against the stone pillar, turning my face to it to cool it. Where had my mother and father taken Lijah? When would they be back? I wanted to be back inside the cottage, but my legs felt weak and I did not trust myself to stand. If I tried to leave now, and fell down, then I would be discovered. My only hope was to wait until they were singing like a bunch of crows and slip out the way I had come. I wanted my son. I wanted to hold him and hold him and whisper to him that no matter how bad things got for us I would never, never give him over to the gorjers.
*
Dei said that by the time they got back to the cottage I was raving like a lunatic. I had our things all packed and bundled up. They’d only just got in the door when I was sobbing how the vicar was going to come and steal our babby and make him live with a gorjer family and go to school and be turned into a little gorjer boy. And that’s how come we took to the road again, in the middle of the winter, all unprepared and with no proper plan in mind. We upped and left that very morning and I have never since ceased to blame myself for what happened as a consequence.
Lijah knew nothing of what was going on, of course. My innocent son was but a few weeks old.
Yes, well, like I said, he was trouble from the start.
CHAPTER 2
If there is one thing I have always been afraid of, it is being shut away. I am so afraid of it that thinking of it makes me go almost mad. And then I fall to reasoning how that’s what madness is. It is like you’re shutting yourself up, inside yourself, and the more frightened you get the madder you get and the madder you get the more afeared you are. And there is something round and round about this that makes me want to put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes – to shut myself away from the thought of being shut away. And then I see all too easy how a person could fall to screaming for no reason. It is like all the bad things in your life start spinning round and round
you until they are like a wall you can’t see past, and then you are finished, oh dordy, you are finished right enough. Not to think on’t, is the only way.
My Lijah, when he was an old man and me even older and still around to see it, was fond of trapping wasps in jam jars and tapping the jar and shouting garn wi’d yer! and laughing and would never understand why it upset me so. We were living together then, in our little house in Peterborough, him an old widower, and me an even older widow. I could never sleep unless the door was propped open. I used a conch shell that I made shiny with shoe polish. And Lijah always said how it was all those years of Travelling made me not like closed doors and I never told him it was more than that.
I have thought on my fear of being shut away and happened across two reasons for it. (Living for as long as I have gives you the time to come up with the reasons for almost anything.) One is the thing that happened when we took to the road that winter. We would never have done such a foolish thing were it not for my ravings after I heard the vicar’s sermon, and I have cursed for ever since that I had the bad luck to go into the church that day and listen when I was not quite of my right mind anyway, being a nursing girl and therefore sorry in the head. It was losing my wits that Sunday in Werrington that led to the awful thing that happened as we crossed the Fens, the thing that took Dei from us.
The other reason is, I met a madman once, a real one, and the meeting of him left such an impression on me that it is the thing I remember mostly from my childhood.
*
I am not sure how old I was, seven or eight or nine, thereabouts. The years of things are difficult for me to recall as I had no reading or writing and do not know even the year in which I was born.
Anyroad, when I was nobbut a little chai, Dadus sent me across the fields one day to see if I could find the tents where my cousins were camped. We were stopped at a big camp at Stibbington and were expecting them to join us, when we were all going down to Corby for the Onion Fair. After a day or two and they had not come, a cattle drover passed by that Dadus was friendly with and he told him there were bender tents over at Yarwell.