Opposite the Cross Keys (17 page)

‘That what the poor little chit told you?' Mrs Fenner put her half-peeled potato down on the newspaper. ‘Look here,' she said, ‘don't you go letting on that I told you anything else –'

‘I told you –' anxiety mounting – ‘it can't have been Nellie's ma who –'

‘You listen to me, young Sylvie.' Mrs Fenner's voice was gentle but firm. ‘It don't do no good to let that gal fill your head wi' fairy stories. Poor thing, consumption's what she had, an' that man of hers already carrying on like Sodom an' Gomorrah, judgin' from the number o' redheads they got running about bare-arsed up the road. I were real sorry for that Nellie Smith when I heard her ma'd copped it. You look outside the Post Office, where the post van pulls in. You can still see the stain on the cement. Give me quite a turn to see him back this year, bold as brass.'

As for me, my heart was bursting with sorrow for the friend whom I had just treated in such cavalier fashion. My promise to Tom was not quite forgotten, but now I told myself that telling a secret to a friend was not really telling, because a friend was part of yourself, and telling yourself wasn't telling, was it? Having resolved the moral problem to my satisfaction (though I recognized the unwisdom of trying out such a Jesuitical solution on Tom), I couldn't wait till tomorrow to show Nellie the spring, show her anything it was in my power to show.

I asked, ‘Did they bury her in Norwich cemetery?'

‘Reckon so. I don't suppose the hospital would 'a let her be buried gypsy way.'

‘Which way's that?'

‘Blamed if I know, exactly. They never let on. On'y people do say, the on'y gypsies you ever see in a graveyard is when they die in hospital, or prison, or the workhouse, where the government know they're dead an' so they have to be put away proper. The rest? Buried out on the common, most likely, or in the hedge bottoms, or maybe an old quarry. They say there's a whole shoot of ' em put away in them gravel workings other side of Spixworth.'

After tea, I went up the road to the encampment, not daring to hope I might actually see Nellie from the entrance, beckon her over, offer to show her where the spring was that very moment, if that was what she wanted; but day-dreaming in the golden evening that all those things were about to happen in happy sequence. Mrs Fenner, who guessed where I was off to as I made for the front door, left open to let in the last of the day, advised me to wait till morning. Anything I might want to say to Nellie Smith could be said as we took our way to the White House which, near Horsford Point, was more than half-way to Norwich.

I said, ‘She might change her mind about coming.'

‘Bullshit! We're going to make our fortunes!'

Nellie Smith's scheme for upping our income from spudgrubbing was one of classic simplicity. The potatoes we were going to lift were new ones – small, much more tiring to pick than the later crop; but even though to fill one of the outsize pails provided by the farmer with little spuds took twenty times the effort needed with the later, larger, ones, the pay was the same for both: penny a pail. And that was for grown-ups. Children, however diligent, could consider themselves lucky to come away with a sixpence for eight to ten hours' backbreaking toil.

The injustice which made Nellie Smith mad was that, while the women might be better pickers of maincrop potatoes than the children, the latter, being closer to the ground, their hands smaller, their movements nimbler, were far and away the best pickers of the new varieties.

The gypsy girl's plan, then, was for her and me not to accept pails at all from the checker who, as always, would have set up his table just inside the field gate. We were just a couple of kids brought along by Mrs Fenner because she couldn't trust the little devils out of her sight. All the potatoes the three of us grubbed up would thus go into the same pail, to be credited to Mrs Fenner's account, attracting the adult rate of remuneration. At the end of the day we would share out the total received, half to Mrs Fenner, the other half to be divided between Nellie and me.

After what Mrs Fenner had told me about Nellie Smith's ma, I had already made up my mind that my earnings next day were going to go to Nellie Smith as well, to help towards paying for a stone angel to take up residence on an unmarked mound of earth somewhere in Norwich cemetery.

When I came to the encampment, Nellie Smith was nowhere to be seen. Nobody was, except the old gypsy woman I had seen before – the old un, as I now thought of her – sitting on the steps of her barrel-shaped caravan, smoking her pipe. Somewhere at the rear of the camp, out of sight, there was something going on: wood smoke rising, babies crying. A harsh voice was singing, to the jangle of a banjo: ‘
Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside
…'

I did not dare to put a foot into gypsy territory. Standing on the roadside verge I bent my body as far forward as it would go without losing its balance, looking for my friend.

The old un took her pipe out of her mouth, spat a disc of yellow saliva on to the sooty earth at the side of the steps, and demanded, ‘What you want?'

She wore a purple kerchief on her head, tied at the back in a way only the gypsies seemed to know, so that it was more than a scarf – a head-dress, stately and forbidding. The woman's nose was narrow, but large and commanding, parting the ridged cheeks on either side like an Israelite, dry-shod, crossing the Red Sea. The black eyes with which she regarded me – there was something wrong with her black eyes.

Whilst I pondered confusedly what it might be, she raised a bony hand and forearm, dug out her right eye and put it in her pocket, producing in exchange a grubby handkerchief with which she proceeded to wipe out the empty socket.

‘Bloody sweat!' she grumbled, more to herself than me; blew her nose on the handkerchief and put it away.

‘What you want?' she asked again.

I faltered, hating to look at that empty socket, unable to take my eyes off it. ‘I wanted to speak to Nellie Smith.'

‘You
wanted
!' The words came back, jeering, spittle at the corners of the mouth. ‘Want's a good thing. Have's a better.'

The observation did not sound promising. Still I stammered, ‘Do you think – I mean – could you please give her a message from me?'

‘Pishy-poshy!' exclaimed the old woman. ‘What a little madam we are!' She drew on her pipe, expelling the smoke with a luxurious deliberation. ‘What kind o' message?'

‘Just that I'm sorry I said no, and I'll tell her about the spring when I see her, even though it is a secret.'

‘Ah – the spring!' The woman put the pipe down on the step beside her, fished the false eye and the handkerchief out of her skirt pocket, and began polishing the one with the other, breathing on the brightly curved little object from time to time. In the evening light it shone like a jewel. When the job was done to her satisfaction she slid it back into the empty socket with a practised ease, before fixing me with her two eyes, black and unblinking. I had the unnerving impression that the false eye saw better than the real. ‘I'll tell her that.' The head-dress inclined regally. ‘I'll tell Nellie Smith you was here.'

I skipped all the way back to Opposite the Cross Keys. Two separate people, passing in the other direction, called out greetings, confirming that I was part of Salham St Awdry, that I belonged. The second, a woman who lived up Back Lane, shouted across the road, ‘You're looking pleased with yourself!'

I was, I was. I skipped home through the waning day, midges dancing, the hedgerows sweet and musky, sports cars speeding past full of beautiful young people, their hair streaming in the wind. I sang at the top of my voice, ‘
Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside
…'

In my state of euphoria I discovered to my surprise that I even loved Ellie, who was sitting outside the cottage as usual, having her last comb of the day. Sneaking up from behind, I flung my arms round her neck and planted a hearty kiss on her cheek. She stared at me agape, speechless.

I kissed her on the other cheek, laughing.

That night I woke up burdened with a worry I couldn't put a name to. Asleep, I had known very well what the matter was. Awake, it eluded me.

The room was light for the middle of the night, moonshine coming through the window, stippling the floor with silhouettes of the geraniums on the sill. I swung my legs off the sofa and went to look out at the moon.

It hung calm and cool, lighting up the road, the houses opposite, the Cross Keys, the village store and the long wall of the churchyard. The sight of the churchyard wall brought back an instant recollection of the dream which had frightened me awake. The rector. The rector had seen the torn frill fluttering from the angel's arm. At the sight he had raised both hands in horror, the way Miss Boothby did at Eldon House when we misbehaved, and cried out, ‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!' before climbing up the memorial – with some difficulty, be it said: he was a corpulent man – and fetching it down.

‘Aha!' he had exclaimed then, recognizing the pattern of the material. ‘This is part of the dress worn by that dratted gypsy girl, Nellie Smith. She shall pay for this! I shall thrash her within an inch of her life – half an inch, a quarter!' He had just set out for the gypsy encampment armed with a whip which he made go
wheeeee
through the air, this way and that, when I woke up.

I was old enough to know a dream when I saw one. Rectors did not go shinning up funerary marbles in real life. If it were considered necessary, they got their vergers to do it. On the other hand, I had it on the best authority – Maud's – that a dream was a warning. Next time the rector took a stroll in his churchyard to make sure all the dead people were sleeping comfortably, he would be sure to see the rag tied to the angel's arm, and give orders for its removal. I doubted if rectors, in real life, noticed what gypsy girls were wearing, one way or another, but Mr Winch, the verger, certainly did, because he looked at little girls a lot, as I could have told anyone who asked; and he would be bound to tell the rector, ‘It's that Nellie Smith up to her tricks again!'

My heart missed a beat. Unless I took immediate action my mindless prank could have the most appalling consequences: the gypsies driven from Salham St Awdry like Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. I would lose Nellie Smith, my friend, for ever.

Stuffing my feet into my plimsolls, I unbolted the front door and went out into the moonlit world, crossing the empty High Street and running round the churchyard perimeter to the church gate. It was neither hot nor cold. Though it was real, though I knew it was real, it felt more like a dream to be hurrying towards a graveyard in night-clothes, in the moonlight.

Thanks to my countless visits of inspection to churches in the company of my father, I had no stupid fear of the dead. Indeed, I was rather partial to them as people who, unlike their living counterparts, never found fault or made one feel small. Climbing the angel memorial made me soaking wet. Pockets of dew had settled in every fold of the angel's toga; but when I was high up enough to tug at Nellie Smith's frill it came away without difficulty.

I got back to the cottage to find Gyp, the old snorer, awake, for a wonder, standing on all fours just inside the door, shaking his head to and fro in a manner at once concerned and disapproving. He ostentatiously did not favour me with any sign of relief at my safe return, merely waited grumpily for me to bolt the door and get back into bed before settling himself afresh on the hearthrug.

I carefully folded the strip of Nellie Smith's dress and put it under my pillow; pulled the coverlet up to my neck, the way I liked it summer or winter. I slept without a dream.

Next day, working Nellie Smith's system at the White House, we made eighteen shillings – nine shillings for Mrs Fenner, four and sixpence each to Nellie and me: an unheard-of sum. When it came to counting Mrs Fenner's tags at the end of the day, the teller at the gate looked at us suspiciously and counted them three times over before shelling out the money. You could see he thought he'd been made a fool of, in some way he couldn't fathom.

I wanted to give Nellie Smith my share right away, before I weakened, but I didn't know how to – not, that is, without letting on that I knew about her ma and the reason for the stain on the cement outside the Post Office. In the end I held it out gracelessly and mumbled that she could have it if she wanted, towards the fare to Yorkshire. Somewhat to my disappointment, she merely said, ‘Ta', and took it without demur.

All day long, side by side, scrabbling in the warm tilth, she had been pleasant, but aloof. I was glad at least that she had another dress on, though it was still one made for a grown-up, printed with ugly flowers and hitched up, like its predecessor, with a length of twine. She did not say whether the old un had passed on my message, and I was too mulish to ask.

It was only when Mrs Fenner and I were about to drop off at Opposite the Cross Keys, Nellie Smith courteously declining an invitation to come in for a cuppa, that the gypsy girl whispered eagerly in my ear, ‘What you say, then? Can we go this evening?'

All in after the day's labour and the long walk home, I had already armed myself to return a curt negative should she put forward just such a proposition. As it was, my heart pierced with joy, my fatigue forgotten, I whispered back, ‘I'll be by for you soon as I've had a drink of water.'

The wood – for which I was grateful, it made me feel less guilty – was quite different from the one Tom had brought me to, in the morning of the year. Vanished was the cathedral architecture of pillars and fan vaulting, of branches spread against the sky. In its place was a muddle of leaves that shut out the light, and, underfoot, a mess of growth which obscured the footpath and made me uncertain of the way.

I cast about this side and the other, whilst Nellie, clasping her empty jam jar to her bony chest, grew grim and unbelieving. When we eventually stumbled upon the glade, it seemed a place so unmagical that I might have crossed it unaware, had not a fugitive murmur of water caught my ear among the brash leaf rustle: the spring, less ebullient in July than in February, a seepage rather than a gurgling, but unmistakably there, tunnelling under a cover of coarse grasses towards that distant river.