Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (9 page)

I picked them up without a word.

They were strange to put on next morning. Dandy helped me with them, and spent hours herself, plaiting and replaiting her hair until it was to her satisfaction in a glossy coronet with the little white cap perched on top as far back as she dared. In absolute contrast I had pulled my cap down low, and stuffed as much of my copper mop inside as I possibly could. I regretted now my impatient hacking of my hair with the big scissors we used to trim the horses’ tails. If it had been longer I could have tied it back. Cut ragged, it was a riot of curls which continually sprang out.

I straightened the cap in front of the mirror. Dandy was retying her pinny ribbon and not watching me. I stared at myself in the glass. It was a much clearer reflection than the water trough beneath a pump, I had never seen myself so well before. I saw my eyes, their shifting hazel-green colour, the set of them slanty. My pale clear skin and the fading speckle of summertime freckles. The riotous thick curly auburn hair, and the mouth which smiled, as if at some inner secret, even though my eyes were cold. Even though I had little to smile for.

‘You could be pretty,’ Dandy said. Her round pink face appeared beside mine. ‘You could be really pretty,’ she said encouragingly, ‘if you weren’t so odd-looking. If you smiled at the boys a bit.’

I stepped back from the little bit of mirror.

‘They’ve got nothing I want,’ I said. ‘Nothing to smile for.’

Dandy licked her fingers to make them damp and twirled her fringe and the ringlets at the side of her face.

‘What do you want then?’ she said idly. ‘What d’you want that a boy can’t give you?’

‘I want Wide,’ I said instantly.

She turned and stared at me. ‘You’re going to have a silk shirt and breeches, aye and a riding habit, and you still dream of that?’ she asked in amazement. ‘We’ve got away from Da, and we can earn a penny a day, and we eat so well, and we can wear clothes as fine as Quality and everyone looks at us. Everyone! Every girl wishes she could wear velvets like me! And you still think of that old stuff?’

‘’Tisn’t old stuff!’ I said, passionate. ‘’Tisn’t old stuff. It’s a secret. You were glad enough to hear about it when there was just you and me against Da and Zima. I don’t break faith just because I’ve got a place in service.’

‘Service!’ Dandy spat. ‘Don’t call this service. I dress as fine as Quality in my costume!’

‘It’s costume,’ I said angrily. ‘Only a silly Rom slut like you would think it was as fine as Quality, Dandy. You look at real ladies, they don’t wear gilt and dyed feathers like you. The real ones dress in fine silks, cloth so good it stands stiff on its own. They don’t wear ten gilt bangles, they wear one bracelet of real gold. Their clothes ain’t dirty. They keep their voices quiet. They’re nothing like us, nothing like us at all.’

Dandy sprang at me, quicker than I could fend her off. Her two hands were stretched into claws and she went straight for my eyes, and raked a scratch down my cheek. I was stronger than her, but she had the advantage of being heavier – and she was as angry as a scalded cat.

‘I
am
as good as Quality,’ she said, and pulled at my cap. It was pinned to my hair and the sharp pain as some hair came out made me shriek in pain and blindly strike back at her. I had made a fist, as instinctive as her scratching hands, and I caught her on the jaw with a satisfying thud and she reeled backwards.

‘Meridon, you cow!’ she bawled at me and came for me at a half run and bowled me back on to my straw mattress and sat, with her heavier weight, while I wriggled and tossed beneath her.

Then I lay still. ‘Oh, what’s the use?’ I said wearily. She released me and stood up and went at once to the mirror to see if I had bruised her flower-white skin. I sat up and put a hand to my cheek. It stung. She had drawn blood. ‘We’ve always seen different,’ I said sadly, looking at her across the little room. ‘You thought you might marry Quality from that dirty little wagon with Da and Zima. Now you think you’re as good as Quality because you’re a caller for a travelling show. You might be right, Dandy, it’s just never seemed that wonderful to me.’

She looked at me over her shoulder, her pink mouth a perfect rosebud of discontent. ‘I shall have great opportunities,’ she said stubbornly, stumbling over one of Robert’s words. ‘I shall take my pick when I am ready. When I am Mademoiselle Dandy on the flying trapeze I will have more than enough offers. Jack himself will come to my beck then.’

I put my hand to my head and brought it down wet with blood. I unpinned my cap hoping it was still clean, but it was marked. I would have complained, but what Dandy said made me hold my peace.

‘I thought you’d given up on Jack,’ I said cautiously. ‘You know what his da plans for him.’

Dandy primped her fringe again. ‘I know you thought that,’ she said smugly. ‘And so does his da. And so probably does he. But now I’ve seen what he’s worth, I think I’ll have him.’

‘Have to catch him first,’ I said. I was deliberately guarding myself against the panic which was rising in me. Dandy was wilfully blind to the tyrannical power of Robert Gower. If she thought she could trick his son into marriage, and herself into the lady’s chair in the parlour which we had not been even allowed to enter, then she was mad with her vanity. She could tempt Jack – I was sure of it. But she would not be able to trick Robert Gower. I thought of the wife he had left behind him, crying in the road behind a vanishing cart, and I felt that prickle of fear down my spine.

‘Leave it be, Dandy,’ I begged her. ‘There’ll be many chances for you. Jack Gower is only the first of them.’

She smiled at her reflection, watching the dimples in her cheeks.

‘I know,’ she said smugly. Then she turned to look at me, and at once her expression changed. ‘Oh Merry! Little Merry! I didn’t mean to hurt you so!’ She made a little rush for the ewer and wetted the edge of my blanket and dabbed with the moist wool at my head and my cheek, making little apologetic noises of distress. ‘I’m a cow,’ she said remorsefully. ‘I’m sorry, Merry.’

‘S’all right,’ I said. I bore her ministrations patiently, but to be patted and stroked set my teeth on edge. ‘What’s that noise?’

‘It’s Robert in the yard,’ Dandy said and flew for the trapdoor down to the ladder. ‘He’s ready for church and Jack and Mrs Greaves and even William with him. Come on, Merry, he’s waiting.’

She clattered down the stairs into the yard and I swung open the little window. I had to stoop to lean out.

‘I’m not coming,’ I called down.

Robert stared up at me. ‘Why’s that?’ he asked. His voice was hard. His Warminster, landlord voice.

He squinted against the low winter sun.

‘You two been having a cat-fight?’ he asked Dandy, turning sharply on her.

She smiled at him, inviting him to share the jest. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we’re all friends now.’

Without a change of expression, Robert struck her hard across the face, a blow that sent her reeling back. Mrs Greaves put out a hand to steady her on her feet, her face impassive.

‘Your faces – aye and your hands and your legs and your arms – are your fortunes, my girls,’ Robert said evenly, without raising his voice. ‘If you two fight you must do it without leaving a mark on each other. If I wanted to do a show tomorrow I could not use Merry in the ring. If you get a black bruise on your chin you’re no good for calling nor on the gate for a week. If you two can’t put my business first I can find girls who can. Quarrelsome
sluts are two a penny. I can get them out of the workhouse any day.’

‘You can’t get bareback riders,’ Dandy said, her voice low.

Robert rounded on her. ‘Aye, so I’d keep your sister,’ he said meanly. ‘It’s you I don’t need. It’s you I never needed. You’re here on her ticket. So go back up and wipe her face and get her down here. You two little heathens are going to church, and mind Mrs Greaves and don’t shame me.’

He turned and strode out of the yard with Jack. He didn’t even look to see if we followed. Mrs Greaves waited till I tumbled down the stable stairs pulling on my cap and patting my cheek with the back of my hand before leading the way out of the yard. Dandy and I exchanged one subdued glance and followed her, side by side. William fell in behind us. I felt no malice towards Dandy for the fight. I felt no anger towards Robert for the blow he had fetched her. Dandy and I had been reared in a hard school, we were both used to knocks – far heavier and less deserved than that. What I did not like was Robert’s readiness to throw us off. I scowled at that as we turned out of the gate and walked to our right down the lane towards the village church.

There was a fair crowd beside the church gate and I was glad then that I had not kept my breeches. All the way up the path to the church door heads were turned and fingers pointed us out as the show girls. I saw why Robert had been so insistent that we behave like Quaker servant girls and dress like them too.

He was establishing his gentility inch by inch in his censorious little village. He was buying his way in with his charities, he was wringing respect out of them with his wealth. He dared not risk a whisper of notoriety about his household. Show girls we might be, but no one could ever accuse any of Robert Gower’s people of lowering the tone.

Dandy glanced around as we walked and even risked a tiny sideways smile at a group of lads waiting by the church door. But Robert Gower looked back and she quickly switched her gaze to her new boots and was forced to walk past them without even a swing of the hips.

I kept my eyes down. I did not need a glance of admiration from any man, least of all a callow youth. Besides, I had something on my mind. I did not like the Warminster Robert Gower as I had liked the man on the steps of the wagon. He was too clearly a hard man with a goal in sight and nothing, least of all two little gypsy girls, would turn him from it. He had felt that he did not belong in the parish workhouse. He had felt that he did not belong in a dirty cottage with a failed cartering business of his own. His first horse had been a starting point. The wagon and the Warminster house were later steps on the road to gentility. He wanted to be a master of his trade – even though his trade was a travelling show. He had felt, as I did, that his life should be wider, grander. And he had made – as I was starting to hope that I might make – that great step from poverty to affluence.

But he paid for it. In all the restrictions which this narrowminded village placed on him. So here his voice was harder, he had struck Dandy, and he had told us both that he was ready to throw us off.

I, too, wanted to step further. I understood his determination because I shared it. I wanted to take the two of us away. I wanted to step right away from the life of gilt and sweat. I wanted to sit in a pink south-facing parlour and take tea from a clean cup. I wanted to be Quality. I wanted Wide.

I watched him and Mrs Greaves closely and I kneeled when they kneeled and I stood when they stood. I turned the page of the prayer book when they did, though I could not read the words. I mouthed the prayers and I opened my mouth and bawled ‘la la la’ for the hymns. I followed them in every detail of behaviour so that Robert Gower could have no cause for complaint. For until I could get us safely away, Robert Gower was our raft on the sea of poverty. I would cling to him as if I adored him, until it was safe to leave him, until I had somewhere to take Dandy. Until I could see my way clear to a home for the two of us.

When we were bidden to pray I sank to my knees in the pew like some ranting Methody and buried my face in my calloused hands. While the preacher spoke of sin and contrition I had only one prayer, a passionate plea to a God I did not even believe in.

‘Get me Wide,’ I said. I whispered it over and over. ‘Get me and Dandy safe to Wide.’

We kept the Sabbath, now that we were on show as Robert Gower’s young ladies. Dandy and I were allowed to walk arm in arm slowly down the main street of the village and slowly back again. I – who could face dancing bareback in front of hundreds of people – would rather have walked through fire than join Dandy in her promenade. But she begged me; she loved to see and be seen, even with such a poor audience as the lads of Warminster. Also, Robert Gower gave me a level look over the top of his pipe stem, and told me he would be obliged if I stayed at Dandy’s side.

I flushed scarlet at that. Dandy’s coquetry had been a joke among the four of us in the travelling wagon. But in Warminster there was nothing funny about behaviour which could lower the Gowers in the eyes of their neighbours.

‘It’s hardly likely I’d fancy any of those peasants!’ Dandy said, tossing her head airily.

‘Well, you remember it,’ Robert said. ‘Because if I hear so much as a whisper about you, Miss Dandy, there will be no training, and no short skirt, and no travelling with the show next season. No new wagon of your own, either!’

‘A new wagon?’ Dandy repeated, seizing on the most material point.

Robert Gower smiled at her suddenly sweet face.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I have it in mind for you and Merry to have a little wagon of your own. You’ll need to change clothes twice during the show and it’ll be easier for you to keep your costumes tidy. You’ll maybe have a new poorhouse wench in with you as well.’

Dandy made a face at that.

‘Which horse will pull the new wagon?’ I asked.

Robert nodded. ‘Always horses for you, isn’t it, Merry? I’ll be buying a new work horse. You can come with me to help me choose it. At Salisbury horse fair the day after tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ I said guardedly.

He shot a hard look at me. ‘Like the life less now we’re in winter quarters?’ he asked.

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘It has benefits,’ he said judicially. ‘The real life is on the road. But only tinkers and gypsies live on the road for ever. I’ve got a good-sized house now, but I’m going to buy a bigger one. I want a house so big and land so big that I can live just as I please and never care what anyone thinks of me, and never lack for anything.’

He looked swiftly at me. ‘That make any sense to you, Merry?’ he asked. ‘Or is the Rom blood too strong for you to settle anywhere?’

I paused for a moment. There was a thin thread of longing in my heart which was my need for Wide.

‘I want to be Quality,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘I want a beautiful sandstone house which faces due south so the sun shines all day on the yellow stone, with a rose garden in front of it, and a walled fruit garden at the back, and a stable full of hunters on the west side.’ I broke off and looked up at him, but he was not laughing at me. He nodded as if he understood.

‘The only way I’ll get my house is work, and hard trading,’ he said. ‘The only way you’ll get to yours is marriage. You’d better make haste and get some of your sister’s prettiness, Meridon. You’ll never catch a squire with your hair cropped short and your chest as flat as a lad.’

I flushed scarlet from my neck to my forehead.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said turning away, angry with myself for saying too much; and that to a man I should never wholly trust.

‘Well, take your walk,’ he called genially, to Dandy and me together. ‘Because tomorrow you start work in earnest.’

I knew what Robert Gower’s idea of earnest work was like, and I kept Dandy’s saunter to a minimum – just up and down the
wide main street – so that I could be home before dinner in time to muck out the stables and groom the horses. Ignoring Dandy’s protests I insisted we leave the kitchen straight after our dinner, so that we could turn the horses out in the paddock just as it was growing dark. In the corner of the field stood the barn which Robert Gower had ordered to be ready, where Dandy’s work would start tomorrow.

‘Let’s go and see it,’ Dandy said.

We trod carefully across the uneven ground and pushed the wide door open. Our feet sank into deep wood shavings, thickly scattered all around the floor. Above our heads, almost hidden in the gloom was a wooden bar on a frail-looking pair of ropes swinging slightly in the draught like a waiting gibbet. I had never seen such a thing before, except in that hand-bill. Just standing on the floor and gazing up made me sick with fright. Dandy glanced up as if she hardly minded at all.

‘How on earth will we get up there?’ I asked. My voice was quavery and I had my teeth clenched to stop them chattering.

Dandy walked across and stood at the bottom of a rope-ladder which hung from a little platform at the top of an A-frame built of pale light wood.

‘Up this, I suppose,’ she said. She tipped her head back and looked up at it. ‘D’you see, Meridon? I suppose we stand up there and jump across to the trapeze thing.’

I looked fearfully up. The trapeze was within reach, if you stretched out far and jumped wide out over the void.

‘What d’we do then?’ I asked miserably. ‘What happens then?’

‘I s’pose we swing out to Jack,’ she said, walking across the floor of the barn. On the other side was a matching A-frame with an open top. ‘He stands at the top and catches my feet, swings me through his legs and back up,’ she said as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

‘I won’t do it,’ I said. My voice was harsh because I was so breathless. ‘I won’t be able to do it at all. I don’t care what I promised Robert, I didn’t know it would be so high and the ropes so thin. Surely you don’t want to do it either, Dandy? Because if you’d rather not, we’ll tell Robert Gower we won’t do
it. If the worst comes to the worst we can make a living some other way. We could run away. If you don’t want to do it too, he cannot make us.’

Dandy’s heart-shaped face rounded into her sweetest smile. ‘Oh nonsense, Merry,’ she said. ‘You think I’m as big a coward as you are. I don’t mind it, I tell you. I’m going to make my fortune doing this. I shall be the only flying girl in the country. They’ll all come to see me! Gentry, too! I shall be in all the newspapers and they’ll make up ballads about me. I can’t wait to start. This is everything for me, Merry!’

I held my peace. I tried to share her excitement, but as we stood in that shadowy barn and I looked up at the yawning roof and the slim swing and the slender rope I could feel my mouth fill with bile and my head grow dizzy.

I put my hands over my ears. There was a rushing noise, I could not bear to hear it. Dandy took hold of my wrists. She was shaking them. From a long way away I could hear her saying: ‘Merry, are you all right? Are you all right, Merry?’

I shook my head, pulling away from her grip, fighting in a panic for my breath, waiting for the vomit to curdle up into my mouth. Then the next thing I knew was a sharp slapping on my cheek. I opened my eyes and put up my hand to ward off a blow. It was Jack. I was held in his arms, Dandy hovering beside him.

‘You with us now?’ he asked tersely.

I shrugged off his hold and sat up. My head still swam.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’

‘Was it just looking at the swing?’ he asked glancing upward, incredulous that anyone could faint for fear at such a petty object.

I hesitated. ‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I suppose it was.’ Jack pulled me to my feet before I could think more clearly. ‘Well, don’t look at it then,’ he said unsympathetically, ‘and don’t go setting Dandy off neither. Da is set on having her up there, and you promised you’d try it.’

I nodded. Dandy’s face was bright, untroubled.

‘She’s set on going,’ I said. My voice was croaky, I coughed and spat some foul-tasting spittle. ‘An’ I’ll keep my word and try it.’

‘You won’t be up there for a while,’ Jack said. ‘Look there, that’s the practice one.’

He gestured over to the other side of the barn near the door where a swing hung so low that I could have jumped up to reach it. Someone hanging would be only ten inches from the floor, just enough to dangle.

‘On that!’ I exclaimed. Jack and Dandy laughed at my face. ‘I could face that!’ I said. Relief made me giggly and I joined in their laughing. ‘Even I could swing on that,’ I said.

‘Well, good,’ said Jack agreeably. ‘It would please my da very much if you would swing on the practice swing. You need never go high unless you want to, Merry. But he’s paying a big fee for the man from Bristol to come and teach us. He’d like to see him in full work for the two months.’

‘I’d wager on that,’ Dandy said nastily. ‘But he agreed that Merry needn’t learn if she was afeared. She’s doing enough for the two of you falling off horses all day, as it is.’

‘I don’t mind swinging on that,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘I might even like it.’

‘Getting dark,’ Jack said. ‘You two had best get back. We’ll start work early in the morning.’

We went out into the grey twilight and Jack pulled the door shut behind us.

‘What’s it like sleeping in a house after being in a wagon all your lives?’ he asked.

‘Too quiet,’ Dandy said. ‘I miss you snoring, Jack.’

‘It’s odd,’ I agreed. ‘The room stays still all the time. You get used to the wagon rocking every time someone moves, I suppose. And the ceiling seems so high. In our old wagon, with Da and Zima, the roof was just above my head and I used to get a wet face when I turned over and brushed against it.’

‘What’s it like for you, Jack?’ Dandy said insinuatingly. ‘Will you miss not seeing us in our shifts in the morning? Or getting a little peep at us when we wash?’

Jack laughed but I guessed he was blushing in the darkness.

‘Plenty of girls in Warminster, Dandy,’ he said. ‘Plenty of choice in this town.’

‘As pretty as me?’ she asked. Dandy could make her voice sound like a gilt-edged invitation to a party, if she had a mind to. I could feel Jack sweat as he walked between us.

‘Nay,’ he said honestly. ‘But a darned sight less troublesome.’ He turned abruptly as we walked into the stable yard. ‘I’ll say goodnight to the two of you here,’ he said, and went through the little door in the wall to the garden and the main house.

Dandy went up the stairs before me humming, and unpinned her cap before the bit of mirror while I lit our one rush candle.

‘I could have him,’ she said softly. It was almost an incantation, as if she were making magic with her own lovely mirror-image. ‘I could have him, though his da has warned him against me, and though he thinks to look down on me. I could call him into my hand like a little bird with a speck of bread.’

She untied her pinny and slid her gown up and over her head. The curves of her body showed clear as a ripple on a stream. Her breasts rounding and plump with pale unformed nipples. The dark shadow of curly hair between her legs and the smooth curve of her buttocks were like magical symbols in an old book of spells. ‘I could have him,’ she said again.

I stripped my Sunday gown off and bundled it into the chest and leaped into my bed, covers up to my chin.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ I said.

At once the desirous tranced expression left her face, and she turned to me laughing. ‘Old Mother Meridon!’ she taunted. ‘Always on the lookout for trouble. You’ve got ice between your legs, Meridon, that’s your trouble. All you ever want there is a horse.’

‘I know what a horse is thinking,’ I said grimly. ‘Pretty Jack could plan a murder and you’d never see it in his eyes. And Robert wants nothing but money. I’d rather have a horse any day.’

Dandy laughed. I heard the floorboards creak as she lay down on her mattress.

‘I wonder what the trapeze artist will be like,’ she said sleepily. ‘I wonder how old he is, and if he’s married. He looked fine on that hand-bill, d’you remember, Merry? Half-naked he was. I wonder what he’ll be like.’

I smiled into the darkness. I need not fear the charms of Jack Gower nor the anger of his father if the man of the trapeze act would just flirt a little with Dandy for the two months that he was with us – and then go.

He was prompt, anyway. He walked into the yard at six o’clock on a bitterly cold November morning, a small bag in his hand. He was dressed like a working farmer, good clothes, made of good quality cloth, but plain and unfashionable. He had a greatcoat on and a plain felt hat pushed back. His impressive moustaches curled out gloriously along his cheeks and made him look braggish and good-humoured. William took one look at him and bolted into the house to tell Robert that he had arrived. Dandy and I observed him minutely from our loft window.

Robert came out at once and shook his hand like an equal. William was told to take the little bag into the house.

‘He gets to sleep inside,’ Dandy whispered to me.

‘But where will he eat?’ I replied, guessing that it was the entry to the dining room which was the significant threshold.

Jack came out at once and was introduced to the visitor.

‘My son Jack,’ Robert said. ‘Jack, this is Signor Julio.’

‘Foreign,’ whispered Dandy, awed.

‘Call me David,’ the man said with a beaming smile. ‘Signor Julio is just a working name. We thought it sounded better.’

Robert turned so quickly that he caught sight of us as we ducked back from the window.

‘Come down you two,’ he called.

We clattered down the stairs. Dandy pushed me before her. I was wearing my working breeches and a white cut-down shirt which once belonged to Jack. I flushed as I saw him look me over. But when I raised my eyes I saw that he was measuring my strength, as I would look at a new colt and wonder what it could do. He nodded at Robert as if he were pleased.

‘This is Meridon,’ Robert said. ‘She’s horse-mad. But if you could get her up high I’d be obliged. She’s the one who doesn’t fancy it, and I’ve given my word she won’t be forced. She’s scared of heights.’

‘There’s many like that,’ David said gently. ‘And sometimes they are the best in the end.’ His voice had a singing lilt I’d heard only once before, from a Welsh horse-trader who sold Da the smallest toughest pony I had ever seen.

‘And this is Dandy, her sister,’ Robert said.

Dandy walked slowly forward, her eyes on David’s face, a hint of a smile around her lips as she watched him scan her from the top of her dark head to the glide of her feet.