The Town House (20 page)

‘The name of the place? I do not know. There is a bridge.’

‘Stone or wood?’

‘Stone. Two arches.’

‘Up river from Flaxham. That’d be Marly?’

‘Perhaps. After the bridge is a place for dipping water and there is my tambourine.’

I knew that on this day Martin had planned to go to Hedingham, and that was nowhere near Flaxham or Marly way. Wasting his time, I thought.

‘Most like it has been picked up by now,’ I said.

‘I do not think anybody will do that,’ she said.

‘I’ll go and have a look. And if I can’t find it you shall have a new one.’

‘It belonged to my mother and I have just bought it new ribbons.’

When he had gone I said to her,

‘Would it have hurt you to say “Thank you”? Here’s a busy man going out of his way, promising you new if he can’t find your old – and that is most unlikely. And you can’t even thank him!’

The bulges under her eyes lifted, squeezing her eyes as she smiled.

‘You should know. You are a woman. If you thank a man he thinks you are in debt to him and so he looks for payment.’

‘Not him,’ I said. ‘He’s the kindest and best-hearted… This whole place is built up on his good heart, lame folks and daft ones and people
in trouble or disgrace, people nobody else wanted.’ I thought of Dummy and Peg-Leg and Peter Priest, and a dozen more. Me too.

She said, ‘People nobody else will want, they are very cheap.’

Something in my head went ‘Snap’ like an over-blown bladder. The shocking part of it was that just for a second I thought – That is
true
! Just as he made that tidy little hut in Squatters Row, out of nothing, out of stuff other people would chuck away or overlook, so he’s made all this out of human rubbish. Even Pert Tom’s savings had been
used,
and Pert Tom so handled that he daren’t bring his baggage into the house.

But that only lasted a second; it was like some of the things you see when you’re very drunk; they seem very real and you’re scared. Then they’re gone. And that was gone.

I said, ‘I suppose you will have to wait to see if he finds your tambourine; and if you want to eat mid-day there’ll be food here, but I’d thank you to get out of my kitchen.’

She went off and I began on my day’s work, which was preserving gooseberries. Our young bushes were in full fruit that year and some of Dummy’s children had gathered them and picked off the tops and tails. I scalded the jars and packed them in close, got the cloths soaking in the mutton fat for the covers, and more mutton fat melted to pour over. Then Pert Tom, who was a slug abed in the mornings, came ambling in for his breakfast.

‘Where’s Martin’s drowned cat?’ he asked.

‘Out. I’m busy. I didn’t want her hanging round me.’

‘I reckon you’d better get used to it. I’ve missed my mark if he don’t take up and marry her.’

‘Marry her. Rubbish!’ But another over-blown bladder had gone ‘Snap’ in my head.

‘You ask yerself. Take the way he looked at her, promised her a new tambourine if hers was lost – and him so mean he didn’t even hev a pair of gloves till you give him a pair for Christmas. You couldn’t’ve missed
that
. If you ask me, she’s cut to his measure, all skin and bone and grief, somebody to feel sorry for, just like his other one.’

I dished him out the heated-up porridge.

‘You knew Kate, then?’

‘Kate?’

‘His wife.’

‘This porridge is burnt, tastes awful. Kate, was that her name? I saw her, yes. I saw her go into the hut – like I say, all skin and bone and grief.
And now he’ve got hisself just such another, after waiting so long.’ He laughed and pushed his porringer away. ‘Still, maybe she can cook.

‘She can,’ I said tartly. ‘She can cook a hedgehog.’

‘A hedgehog? That ain’t Christian food,’ he said, exactly as I had done. ‘Thass real Romany.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Oh, foreign. Out of Pharaoh’s Egypt some say. There’s one or two on the roads, but decent people don’t hev nowt to do with them. They’re heathen. They don’t even lay together like other people, they do it cutting their thumbs and letting the blood mix.’

‘The tales you tell!’

‘I only pass on what I hear tell myself. And of course if she is Romany I shall miss my mark ‘cause she couldn’t marry him. They ain’t allowed to stay in one place more’n a moon month; if they do they die.’

He finished his breakfast and went off, it being Wednesday, to idle away his time looking round the market and sitting in one ale-house after another, listening to and spreading gossip. He didn’t come in for dinner, nor did the girl, so I fed those men who were on wages-and-dinner terms, finished my gooseberries and sat down to rest myself before starting supper. I’d hardly set down before Pert Tom came in, full of ale and something else, I could see before he opened his mouth that he had a fine tit-bit to tell me.

He looked round the kitchen and up in the loft.

‘Is she about?’

‘No. You can see for yourself.’

He pulled a stool near me.

‘Now you listen to this. Know what we’ve got in the house now? A witch, no less!’

‘Rubbish,’ I said, partly because his tales were so far-fetched and partly because, like almost every other old woman who was poor and looked a bit wild I’d had the word ‘Witch’ flung at me in my time. Nevertheless, when he brought out the word I thought – That’s it! That accounts for the way I feel about her, not wanting her to handle my things, not wanting to touch her.

‘Rubbish away. Only tell me this, where’d Martin say he found her?’

‘Flaxham. By the mill.’

‘Right. And what lay up-river from Flaxham? Maybe you don’t know.’

‘As it happens I do. A place called Marly.’

‘Right again. Well, Tuesday morning, yestiddy that is, a Marly man heard his dog barking early in the morning; he look out and what do he see but
a young woman with long black hair, raiding his hens’ nest. He see her take two eggs, one she stuck in the front of her dress, the other she kept in her hand. Jest as he was he run out and ask for his eggs back. Shesay–Take it, and give him the one in her hand. He say she’ve got another, she say she h’ain’t, and he say all the time he can see it bulging out inside her bodice. So he go to take it, as who wouldn’t? And she say to him. “Don’t you put your hand on me,” she say, “if you do you’ll be very sorry.” But he don’t take no notice, he take the egg instead. And then what happen?’

‘His arm dropped off at the shoulder.’

‘You’re a funny owd crone, ain’t you? No, what happen is that he go out to the hay field and afore he’ve been there a quarter hour somebody unhandy with a sickle cut off two fingers for him. Now thass no good saying “Rubbish”, the man that towd me had jest brought the poor man to the Abbey Infirmary; they’d stopped the bleeding with hot tar but he was swelling up cruel. Only, here’s the point to this tale. Everybody in Marly turned out to chase the witch and by the bridge they found her. They tied her skirt round her knees and chucked her in to see do she sink or swim. And she swum! Straight down river towards Flaxham, this chap say, sailing like a swan. Now do you believe me?’

I did. It all fitted in, even to her saying that nobody would have picked up her tambourine from the river bank. Of course not. Nobody would want to touch her gear. Just as, in my unknowing way I hadn’t wanted to touch anything she’d handled.

‘Yes. For once I do,’ I said. ‘We must tell Martin.’

‘I can’t wait to see his face. Fancy him swallowing that yarn about using the water for a looking –’

He broke off and turned his head sharply and looked towards the door. I saw his colour change and he crossed himself, openly. I turned too, and there she was, leaning against the doorpost and holding something in her hands. I slipped one thumb over the other in the shape of the Cross, under cover of the table.

She said,

‘To wagging tongues things sometimes happen, too.’ As she spoke she walked in and laid what she held on the table. It looked like a ball of clay, about the size of your head, loosely covered with dock leaves.

I’ve seen some frightened people, but seldom anybody worse scared than Pert Tom. He jumped up and blurted out, stammering and blinking,

‘I shan’t say anything. I shan’t mention it,’ and he hurried into his room, where, I knew, he would ask his St. Ursula to protect him.

The girl said to me,

You cross your thumbs, but you will tell Martin what you hear?’

‘If my tongue still wags, yes. I’m so old that what happens to me doesn’t matter any more.’

She leaned against the
edge
of the table and folded her arms.

‘Is all nonsense, of course. Alone, on the road, as I am most times, a woman must take care. The tale is a lie. Partly. Was Monday evening, not Tuesday morning; and there was no egg. You understand me. No egg. Me, looking for sleeping place and the man, like all men. You should know, once a man has his hand,
here,
who is safe? So his fingers are chopped. Every day, some place, fingers are chopped.’ She leaned side-ways, still with her arms folded and laughed. ‘If I could say a thing and make it
be,
I am not wasting my time chopping fingers. No. I would say, Let me dance like my mother! Oh, if that could be!’ She sat up straight again and threw back her head and for a moment, in the stuffy kitchen it seemed as though the wind blew on her face.

I was old, and since I had come to live at the Old Vine I’d had a quiet life, nothing much to think about except whether to serve beef or mutton. So now, with so much, all at once, all strange and different, I was confused. Later, I thought, later, in the quiet of my bed, I’ll think it all over. Just for the moment I wanted something real and firm to seize upon. And there was this bundle on the table.

‘What is that?’

‘Is a hedgehog. Is not food for Christians you say, so I will show you.’

‘Oh no. You’re cooking no hedgehogs here. Not in my pots.’

‘He is needing no pot. He has his own. See.’ She picked up the bundle and stripped off the dock leaves. ‘We bury him, so, in the hot ash and he makes his own pot. When he is ready we crack him and his prickles all come away with the pot.’

She buried the thing at the fire’s edge, pushed it inwards a little and pulled a log over it. As she straightened up, Martin, back much earlier than usual, walked in, holding the tambourine.

‘Here you are,’ he said.

She swooped forward and took it from him, the bells jingled and jangled, the ribbons, red and yellow and blue, green and purple and pink, just like the stripes of her ragged skirt, fluttered and shook.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘is so
so
kind! My tambourine.’ She drummed on it lightly with the fingers. ‘Not spoilt. I was afraid, out on the grass… Is good. Now, after supper, I will dance for you.’

Pert Tom had to be called to supper, and came out like a dog with a bad conscience. Ordinarily after market day he would chatter on and Martin would grunt, and show little interest until Tom told of some mishap that had befallen some Baildon man, and then he would look up and grunt in another tone. But tonight Tom was silent, every now and again looking at the girl and if he happened to catch her eye, shake his head a little and make a secret face, trying to reassure her that his tongue would never wag. Presently Martin said,

‘What’s the matter, Tom? No gossip going round today?’

‘Not a thing. Not a thing,’ Tom said and bent over his food. He was eating what I had cooked, but Martin was eating the hedgehog.

She’d cracked off the clay and I admit that the meat left inside looked clean enough and smelt very tasty; but I couldn’t bring myself to try it, and Tom was too scared. Martin said,

‘I will. Come to think of it, if nobody had ever tried anything new there’d be precious little to eat.’

As he ate he praised it and I tried not to mind or be jealous. After all, I longed and prayed that something would happen to make him shake off the dead past and come alive again, and if it took a wild thing out of the woods, with a tambourine and a hedgehog to do it, who was I to complain? I could only hope that she would rouse him, make him feel that there was something left in life besides hard work and making money, and then go off and leave him to take up with a decent woman.

All through supper she sat, looking at the tambourine and now and again touching it. As soon as the meal was over she jumped up and asked Tom and Martin to move the table. They began to push it towards the hearth, but she said,

‘No, no. The other way. Is better the light behind me.’

When the space was cleared and we were gathered at the other end, she walked down towards the fire, keeping close to the wall and sidling along. Then she stood still, like a cat about to make a spring. And then, with a shake of the tambourine and a little hoarse cry she leaped out into the centre of the space and began to dance.

I’ve seen many dancing girls in my day. In the old times, in Squatters Row, in a good summer I’ve known as many as four be there all at once, and late at night they’d dance, not for pay, but to outdo each other. Some were good and some were bad, but the best of them
was
only a girl dancing when all was said and done. This was something different.
Dancing she really could cast a spell. What but magic could make that ragged gaudy old skirt shake out into blurred soft colours like a rainbow or the sunlight on the spray over a weir? How else could she move so that it was all movement, a bird in flight, a deer leaping, a tree swaying in the wind? The music was magic too for a tambourine has but two sounds, the thrum on the skin and the jingle of the bells; in her hands it made real music in which there was the rush of the wind, the birds’ calling, even the solemn chant of the Church.

As long as it lasted you could only sit and stare and wonder. Even I, an old woman, with all my fires quenched, could feel again the stir and the ache, not in the flesh, or for it, but for something more, that something which, when you are young, you think lies round the next corner, and when you are old you know you missed because it never could be there. Here, just for once, in the homely kitchen, against the light of the dying fire, it all was, held out for us.