Stone Cradle Read online

  ‘Lemmy,’ my Dadus says to me, ‘Go over the fields and see if it’s your cousins, and if it’s not, asks them whereabouts they’ve been and if they’ve news of them.’ He was thinking we might have to put the word out we had gone to Corby. The folk we were stopped with wouldn’t tarry.

  So I set off across the fields and I was happy as a little lark because it had got me out of butter.

  We had the use of a milch cow at that time, a fine roan-coloured one, as I remember, and Dei was making butter that day. It took sixteen buckets of water for each churning and guess who had to fetch them sixteen buckets from the village well?

  I was halfway there when I realised I had the carrot in my apron pocket. This was unfortunate.

  We had finished off the carrots last night, when we had had dumplings and a bit of warmed-up gravy. As she dished up, Dei had passed me a piece of carrot and said, ‘Put that in your pocket and keep it safe, it’s for the butter.’ You got a much better yellow with a bit of carrot added. I had forgotten all about it in my haste to get off and now I did not know what to do. Dei would be wanting that piece of carrot for the churning. I stopped and looked behind me. I had gone so far it was a bit late to turn back.

  I was stood in the middle of the field. It was one of those fields that had a rise to it, as if the earth was breathing. I was right on the top of the rise and could see in all directions: the dip and lift of the world around me, distant trees looking grey and green and smoky and not a soul in sight. Before me, the ridges and furrows of the fallow earth tumbled and clambered. If I stopped still, then rocked on my heels, it looked as if the field was moving. It was a warm day, but with a breeze, a lovely day for walking to try and find your cousins. I looked up at the sky, closing my eyes to squint at the sun, as if there might be answers up there and something should happen to tell me whether to go on or go back.

  I usually find that if you ask the sky to tell you something, it answers back, sharpish.

  I had just dropped my gaze from the sky when I saw it. In the near distance, something was moving against the hedge. At first, I thought my sight was maybe a little squinty on account of the sun, so I closed my eyes and opened them again. I was right, something was moving to and fro in the hedge no more than thirty yards ahead of me.

  At this I began to feel a little afraid, as I could tell it was an animal of some sort, yet it was too large for a dog, too small for a cow and too nimble for a sheep.

  A terrible thought came to me. What if it was Bafedo Bawlo, the Ghost Pig? (That is the thing I am most afeared of next to being locked up and will tell you about some other time.)

  Whatever it was, it was moving restlessly from side to side along the hedge, as if it was looking for something in the undergrowth. I thought maybe I should just turn and run but whatever it was must be able to see me plain as I was standing right there in the centre of an empty field and I reckoned most animals could probably catch me in a chase. I did not want to approach it, neither, so I took a middle course and started to walk to the corner of the field that was to its right. This way I was a-signalling that I was no threat to it but was not afraid of it neither.

  Then a heart-stopping thing happened. It started to lollop alongside the hedge so that it would catch up with me at the corner. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around but there was no help for miles around and I knew I must find out what this thing was. So I walked calmly, keeping my eyes on it, until after a few paces it became the shape of a man.

  I say a man: it was as much beast as man. It was on all fours, but crouching on its haunches and using its knuckles to walk itself along. It was dressed in a shabby shirt and trousers of the same colour, which should have warned me of something. It had no shoes upon its feet and there was soil in its beard and on its hat. It was nothing but a tramp, a poor, filthy mumper come on hard times, and I did my best to take pity on it as I approached while wanting nothing to do with it if I could.

  It was clear that the mumper was determined to speak with me, but men as I neared him he crouched down and flopped both arms over his head and shoulders, as if to protect himself from a beating. I stopped and stared at him. He raised his head suddenly and I saw his face.

  He was an old man. His eyes were big and watery – the lines on his face dark grooves. He had a few days’ growth of beard that was grey. It was the face of someone in great pain.

  We stared at each other for a while, then he threw his head back and gave a short bark of a laugh. This startled me and I went to continue on but he held out his hand and said pleadingly, ‘No, child, child, stay a minute.’

  I stopped and we stared at each other again. ‘Pray, child, tell me,’ he said, ‘are you a member of the sooty crew?’

  Who’s he calling sooty? I thought indignantly. Has he looked in a puddle lately?

  ‘I mean, are you part of the lawless clan? I think you have that look about you, and I cannot tell you what joy that is for me. Are you a child of Tyso, perhaps? You resemble him somewhat. Is he hereabouts?’

  At this I began to wonder if he could be a Romani chal, but I could not believe that one of us could ever sink to such a state of degradation. I knew not what to do.

  ‘I must be on my way, sir, I am expected,’ I said gently, giving a little bob of a curtsey, Lord knows why.

  He pointed across the field and said with pride, ‘’Twas in yonder brook I came across a sizeable gudgeon.’ There was no brook anywhere nearby that I could see.

  It was at this point I had the misfortune to notice that his trousers were unbuttoned. I gave a start, for I had never seen such a thing on a grown man. A sizeable gudgeon indeed. I was now becoming fearful again because my mother had always told me three things about mad people: they feel neither heat nor cold; they undress themselves at any moment; and they do not realise you are a person at all because they are mad and do not even know what people are.

  I realised that the man in front of me was truly mad and so might do anything. He seemed to have forgotten my presence, for he was staring at the earth and muttering, ‘Ah, the marshy fen … the marshy fen …’ Then he fell to saying, ‘Marshy, marshy, marshy …’ as if there was something in the sound of the word that upset him.

  There was nothing for it, I bobbed another curtsey, turned on my heel and began walking back the way I had come.

  I only realised he was following me as he was almost upon me. I heard his breath close behind and turned on him. He had been running but at once dropped on all floors and bowed his head again.

  ‘You can’t come home with me, sir,’ I said firmly, although my heart was knocking in my chest. ‘My mother and father would not like it.’ Dei, I’ve come back with the carrot, oh, and I found a lunatic in a field and I’ve brought him back with me, too. I had a sudden image of the lunatic spinning and bumping inside the butter churn.

  Then he did something most alarming. He grabbed my hand. He kept his head bowed, though, and said, ‘I am knocked up and foot foundered, Mary. I have walked from Essex. If you do not take me in, I will surely die.’

  Well, he’s not one of us, just a common vagrant, I thought, but I can’t leave him in the field. I’ll have to take him back to Dei and Dadus.

  ‘Come back with me to the place where we are stopped,’ I said, trying to sound as high and mighty as was possible. ‘And you can speak to my father.’

  I could think of nothing else to do. I could hardly turn up at my cousin’s tents with a lunatic in tow.

  He was good as gold after that, following behind me at a respectful distance, not speaking, only humming to himself now and then.

  You should have seen the look on Dei’s face when she saw me walking back towards the camp, my very own lunatic following close behind.

  *

  Later that day, the men held a meeting. There was a big clunch pit on the edge of the camp and they would walk around it to the far side and sit behind the bushes, so that they had their privateness from the rest of the camp. I did something I had never dared to do in my whole life before, or since. I followed my Dadus, at a safe distance, mind, then peeled off and went down into and up the other side of the pit, so’s I could hide behind the bushes and listen to what they said.

  It was a wicked thing to do, as I was naught but a girl, and I knew’d if I was caught listening to the men talking the talk I would be beaten to blazes. But I was passionate about the lunatic then, in the same way that my cousin Elias was passionate about the mongrel puppy he had bought off the farmer the week before. The lunatic was a gorjer, that much was certain, but he was my gorjer. I think I had somehow got the idea that I could feed him bread soaked in milk, like Elias did his puppy, and bring him back to health. I think it was due to me not having had any little brothers or sisters and not having enough things to look after. There were plenty of babies in our camp – we were in a big camp then – but there were lots of young girls as well and I only got jobs like cleaning and butter churning and I think I thought I was big enough for more than that.

  The meeting was a great disappointment, as they rambled on about men’s stuff – the horses and the metal-working – and I couldn’t for the life of me think why it was always such a big secret when they went off to talk for it’s not as if the rest of us would be interested anyway.

  Then it came to my lunatic. My Dadus said how he thought it might be useful to have the mumper around for a bit, as he could be put to work fetching and carrying and how we could leave him when we moved on to Corby. And one of the other men said how my Dadus would have to be responsible and Dadus agreed and that was the end of it.

  And before they had finished talking I slithered back down into the clunch pit and scrambled up the other side and got my clothes all chalky but I didn’t care as I ran back to our camp across the fields because I couldn’t wait to see my lunatic.

  And so it was, the very next day, I had him carrying sixteen buckets of water to and from the well, while I walked behind him. And he was as quiet and biddable as a lamb, and the other girls crowded round me asking me how I had tamed him so quick and I could see in their eyes that they were right jealous and wanted to go out in the fields and get their own lunatic.

  I was only a biti chai, otherwise I would have realised that someone in the village would have seen him going to and from the well with me and said something to someone else.

  That evening, I took my lunatic a plate of potatoes and a cup of buttermilk. He was sitting on the edge of the camp, cross-legged, seeming to understand how he mustn’t go too close to anyone’s vardo or interfere with anything. I carried the tin plate over, heaped with potatoes and onions all fried up nice and brown, and a spoon to go with and the cup in the other hand, and he looked up at me with shining eyes as he took it all from me.

  I sat down next to him, at a little distance, and watched him feast. He ate and drank with great purpose, like a man who could not think of anything else until it was done.

  When he had finished, he put his plate on the grass and looked up at the sky. It was a warm evening. The last of the sun was on his face. He belched, then stared at me. His look made me uncomfortable, so I turned away. When I glanced back at him, he was staring at our camp. The women were all cooking, and smoke rose from the fires and drifted around, hazing everything: evening light, golden. It suddenly came to me, all at once, how good my life was, for I was seeing it through his eyes.

  My lunatic gave a sigh. ‘I wish I could die, here and now,’ he said, his voice quite level and normal. ‘For I think there can be no contentment greater than this, the open sky. What is it about potatoes cooked under the sky, do you think? Can it be the summer air gets into them?’

  ‘My mother used a bit of the fresh butter,’ I said.

  ‘Ah …’ he said.

  I was enjoying this small, normal conversation, and was thinking about asking him some questions about his life and how he came to be a lunatic. Then, suddenly, he started smacking the side of his head with the flat of his hand, as if there was something in the other ear he was trying to dislodge. ‘Gone! Gone! Gone!’ he groaned. I felt a rush of disappointment, for I had persuaded myself that with enough fresh air and potatoes, he might be brought sane, then I would have the pleasure of telling people I had cured a madman once. But I saw my own folly at once.

  He muttered into the ground, as if he had forgotten me. Then he lifted his head and glared at me. ‘That blackguard Taylor! I’d like to take a stick and knock his hat off!’ His shook his fist at me, and I rose without a word and ran back to the safety of the camp, leaving his empty plate and spoon on the ground.

  *

  The men came two days later. They entered the camp as gorjers do, marching around like they own the earth and can go anywhere whenever they like. As they strode up to our vardo, the men and boys gathered round, at a discreet distance but watching carefully, in case they had come for one of us. My Dadus raised his hand in a signal that it was naught to bother about, for he knew why they’d come right enough.

  The lunatic was sitting cross-legged by our vardo, and my Dadus pointed him out. I thought the men would go and speak to him, but they said not a word. They went over and grabbed him, one arm each, and hauled him to his feet, then dragged him across the camp, to the edge of the common. I ran after them, and Dei and Dadus followed behind.

  The lunatic had begun to struggle and whimper like a baby. It wasn’t mad crying out, it was moaning in fear. It was horrible how not-mad it was. As they reached the edge of the common, he broke one arm free and began to flail it about. At this, the men lost their tempers and pushed him face down in the dirt. One sat astride the lunatic’s back and pulled his arms behind him. He cried out in pain, his face pressed to the dirt. The other had a bit of rope and he began to wind it round the lunatic’s wrists to bind them, cursing as he did.

  I tugged at Dadus’s sleeve and he understood me right enough. ‘I think you may be gentle with the old fella,’ he said to the men, ‘he was ill when my daughter found him and has not fully recovered. He told her he had walked from Essex.’

  One of the men gave an unpleasant, disbelieving sound. ‘Essex, my arse. He’s escaped from Northampton General Lunatic Asylum.’ He stood and hauled my lunatic to his feet. ‘Come on, John,’ he said, ‘that’s the last you’ll be bothering folk for a while.’ His tone was not unkind, more casual, which somehow upset me all the more.

  I followed to the start of the lane. Parked by the verge was a small wagon with a flat roof. It was so tiny that the whole of the back of it was the door, and they lifted my lunatic up and into it and it was then he began to cry. They slammed the door shut behind him and bolted it and there was a small barred window in the back and he stared at me through it.

  The look he gave me as they pulled the wagon away will stay with me until the day I die.

  My Dadus came and rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s what they do with folks that lose their wits,’ he said gently. ‘They are chained up and beaten like dogs and the more they howl the more witless they are thought to be.’ He shook his head and then turned back to the camp.

  I realised I was crying too and wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. My mother came and gave me a gentle cuff about the head. ‘Here,’ she said, and thrust a handkerchief at me to wipe my face. ‘That’s how it begins,’ she said, ‘You lose your dignity and next thing, you’re sliding down into the mud.’

  I knew she didn’t really mean it, that wiping your face on your sleeve was the beginning of losing yourself and going mad, but I took the point all the same. It didn’t matter what happened to you, how much you were hurt by the world, you must never break down in front of others and let them see, because once you lost your dignity other people thought they owned you. They thought they could push you into a tiny wagon no bigger than a dog kennel and you had no right to mind. I’ve never forgotten that, although I know that my lunatic had probably forgotten me by the time his little wagon had turned the corner at the bottom of the lane.

  *

  When we left Werrington, that winter when Lijah was just a new babby, we headed straight off Whittlesey way. I felt bad because I knew Dei had liked the cottage in the cemetery, liked being able to cook and clean more easily for a while. Dadus had never been happy there, mind you, and was glad of an excuse to get out. There were ghosts in the ground, he said. Evil spirits.

  We took it slow, a few miles a day, as we’d not used the vardo for a while. We were as far as Prior’s Fen when Dadus stopped and said there was a problem with the back axle so we all had to get down. The wind blew down the road and Dei and me huddled round tiny Elijah. Then it began to rain, that freezing, stinging rain which feels as though someone is sticking needles in your face. Dadus told us to go and shelter beneath the oak by the crossroads for we couldn’t go further until he’d moved everything about in the vardo. The weight inside needed shifting, he said. So Dei and me hurried off down the road and the rain came down and down and by the time we got to the oak we were both soaked through and my feet were wet and slipping in their clogs.

  We huddled down against the trunk of the oak. It was rough against our backs but the rain made the earth smell warm and at least we were sheltered which was more than Dadus was bending over the vardo’s back axle. Dei was shivering, and I felt worried for her, for I knew she was thinking how we could have all been back in the cottage. It would be dark soon, then we’d have to pull the vardo onto a verge, which is the thing most likely to get you in trouble with the gavvers.

  I said, ‘Should we go back to Eye Green, d’you think, Dei?’

  Dei said, ‘I’m not keen on the folk at Eye.’

  After a while, a farmer rode past on his horse, leather cape over his shoulders. He slowed as he passed by, looked down at us huddled beneath the tree, and spat at our feet. Then he trotted on.

  It was near dark by the time Dadus trotted up to us and still raining. ‘I’ve fixed it up enough so’s we can make it to that row of oaks,’ he said, ‘but Dei will have to walk.’