On the day that the first bomb was dropped on London we were walking by the Tarn. We knew nothing about the bomb, though, until we read about it in the paper the following morning. The bombing of civilians made us hate the Boche even more. It seemed like absolutely ages since we had all been worrying about a civil war in Ireland, even though that had been only a few weeks before.
Ash was in khaki, and looked very dashing. All the training had thinned him a little, and there was a jaunty spring in his step. He and I were strolling in front, and my sisters were walking behind at quite a distance, in order to avoid being gooseberries, and give us some privacy. Ash’s brothers Sidney and Albert were with them, charming them all at once. If they came out, it spared my mother the trouble of being a chaperone, and in any case it was better for Ash and me because my mother was very taken with him herself. She would monopolise the conversation, and even be flirtatious. If she was with us, she rather spoiled things. It was windy and cold, but I always did like clear autumn days. The golden leaves were drifting and lifting, and ripples passed across the surface of the water. ‘The trees were weeping yellow leaves’, as I wrote in one of my poems from back then. We had taken stale bread for the swans.
Ash and I sat on a bench, and Ottie, Sophie, Albert, Sidney and Christabel went to the other side of the Tarn. They had Bouncer with them, and he was a slow old dog by then, especially as he liked to stop and sniff at practically everything. We saw a gypsy girl approaching us. ‘Oh darn,’ said Ash wearily. It was obvious that she was going to importune us.
She was young, perhaps no more than fifteen, but she had a tiny baby wrapped up in a shawl and perched on one hip. The gypsies were a law unto themselves. They lived parallel lives that we knew very little about. When they turned up with their ponies and pretty wagons and their scrawny optimistic little dogs and their frightful hordes of wild children, you could expect a flurry of crime. Your milk bottles would go missing from the doorstep, and you’d lose your rake and even your brass doorbell. Ash was inclined to see the best in people, and said it was because the petty criminals in the locality took advantage of the fact that everyone would automatically blame the gypsies.
A lot of them were very useful people. The tinkers could mend almost anything made of metal, and they’d sharpen knives marvellously well. They had grinding stones that rotated through a trough of water, and they’d set them up in the street so that the scullery maids could rush out and get the cooks’ knives perfect again. The gardeners would go out with their axes and sickles and billhooks. The didicois took away all the metal things that were beyond repair. There were people called pikeys as well, and they got most of the blame for the thieving. They didn’t seem to have any other profession. The gypsies ran the funfairs and they travelled around picking whatever harvests needed to be picked. They always passed our house when it was time to pick the hops in the Weald, the men walking beside their ponies, leading them by the halter, and the children scampering in and out of the wagons.
This gypsy girl was a Romany. They had their own language and sometimes they’d stop speaking it the moment they thought you might be listening, or, contrarily, they’d tip into it so that you couldn’t understand. She was dark-skinned, with shiny black hair, and big gold rings through each earlobe. Her eyes were so dark that you couldn’t see how big the pupils were. She was wearing a loose scarlet dress embroidered in gold and black, and a waistcoat that matched. When Daniel showed me his photographs of India after the war, I was struck by how similar the Hindus looked to our Romanies. The girl looked wonderful and exotic, but she was obviously cold, and she was dirty too.
She stood before us, and held out a sprig to Ash. ‘Good day to thee. Lucky white heather,’ she said.
Ash looked at her a little ironically, and replied, ‘Isn’t it supposed to be in bloom? How do I know if it’s really white heather?’
She screwed up her mouth vexedly, and said, ‘Times is hard. I got a baby.’
‘What’s its name?’ asked Ash.
‘She’s Sinnaminti,’ said the girl, ‘and I got another chavi called Nilly-Lisbee, and a chal by name of Awkie.’
We were shocked. ‘But you’re only a child yourself!’ exclaimed Ash.
The girl blew a wisp of hair away from her mouth and shrugged. ‘Even so, I loves them. There’ll be more if God allow.’
You could almost hear Ash’s heart melting. He was such a kind and gentle soul. He reached into his pocket and took out a florin. The girl’s eyes lit up and she gave an involuntary start of joy. She took the coin hurriedly and secreted it somewhere about her waist. She pressed the heather into Ash’s hand.
‘Cross my palm with silver,’ she said, ‘and I’ll read thy vast.’ She saw his look of puzzlement, and she added ‘hand’, further adding, ‘I got the gift. It came down the fam’ly. My old mother passed it down.’
‘I just did cross your palm with silver,’ said Ash.
‘Indeed, sir, but that was for the heather.’
Ash reached into his pocket and brought out six pennies that had been bothering him with their weight and which he was glad to get rid of. She shook her head. ‘It needs be silver.’
‘Silver?’
‘Pennies is copper. It needs be silver.’
‘So if I gave you twenty guineas in copper farthings, you wouldn’t take it?’
‘I’d take it indeed, sir, but I couldn’t read thy vast. I’d have to be pretending, sir.’
I rummaged in my purse and proferred the girl a silver threepence, which she immediately tucked away. She took my hand and traced some lines on it with her forefinger. I caught her scent. She smelled of something aromatic, but I couldn’t place it. She looked at the bottom edge, and frowned. ‘Thou’lt get to be middling old,’ she said. ‘Thou’s going to beget two and half children, thou’s going to be sick, but not fatal, and thou’lt have to take care of thy heart. Thy heart be weak, ma’am.’
‘Two and a half children?’ I cried. ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’
The girl shrugged. ‘I read what I read, ma’am.’
Ash looked at me tenderly, and said, ‘How wonderful it will be to have children. We’d better start thinking of names.’
He held out his hand to the girl. She studied it intently for a few moments, and then, quite suddenly, thrust it aside as if it had burned her. ‘I can’t read it,’ she said.
‘Please,’ said Ash.
‘No, sir, I can’t read it. Thou’ld best not ask.’ She reached into her clothing and found the threepence, which she gave back to me. She hitched the child further up her hip, made a small noise in her throat that sounded like a stifled sob, looked up at Ash with teary eyes, and said something like ‘Such a rinkeno cooramengro. God save you both.’ Then she hurried away, round the Tarn, straight past my sisters, who thereby escaped being sold white heather or having their fortunes told.
I looked at Ash, and he caught my eye and snorted. ‘Two and a half children! Whatever next?’
‘What do you think she saw in your palm?’ I said.
‘It’s all stuff and nonsense,’ said Ash. ‘She didn’t see anything at all.’
‘Why would she be so upset then?’
‘Because she thought she did. The superstitious are even handier at deceiving themselves than they are at deceiving others.’
We sat side by side in silence for a while. Leaves spiralled down into the black surface of the Tarn, and the ducks on the grassy bank shook the water out of their feathers. I shivered, overcome by sudden gloom, my heart heavy, and Ash said, ‘Yes, it’s getting cold. Let’s go back.’
I’d recently bought a statuette of the Virgin Mary, and I kept it wrapped up in a cloth under my bed. I didn’t want the rest of the family to know, because we were Anglicans, and they would have disapproved and thought I was becoming a papist. I loved the Virgin, though. Mine had a light blue robe with a gold hem. She had blue eyes, blonde hair and rosy lips. Her feet were bare. She was holding up the Christ child, who was also blue-eyed, blond and rosy-cheeked. He was holding a golden orb in his right hand, and looking very serious. His left hand rested terribly affectionately on the Virgin’s wrist. Years and years later Daniel pointed out to me that the Virgin had actually been a Jewess from Palestine, and was probably quite dusky. I didn’t say anything, but I think that the Virgin gives herself to you in any way that makes it easier for you to understand her. That’s why I wasn’t shocked when I saw a photograph of a black Virgin somewhere in Africa, and a Chinese one in Singapore.
That night I took my Virgin out from under the bed and stood her on my bedside table. I asked her to intercede for Ash and to save him from whatever the gypsy girl saw. I thought that I could protect him if I prayed for him every night, so I resolved to do so, even if I was too tired and even if it was too cold.