Stone Cradle (4 page)

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.’

‘I’ll walk,’ I said.

‘Don’t be foolish now,’ said Dei, as she struggled to her feet.

In the end, we all walked, all but Lijah of course, who lay swaddled in a basket inside the
vardo,
and as I put him in I thought how wonderful to be a little babby and to be wrapped up warm all the time and have nothing to think of. Dadus led the horse, which was starting to shiver, and Dei and I guided the
vardo
by pushing either side, but it was all we could do to get it round the corner and in the dark we could hardly see the lay-by and we were all soaked to the bone. Dei and I went in first and lit the lantern and took our wet things off and stowed them, then hung the curtain for Dadus. He
wasn’t speaking when he finally came in, he was that soaked and cold. And we were all hungry and there was nothing but Dei gave me a last bit of bread and said a nursing girl had to have something inside her. And I must say as Lijah woke and cried to be fed I felt right sorry for myself, for I felt as though everything was wrong but I didn’t know yet how much wronger it was going to be.

We were low on oil, so we shut the lantern as soon as I’d finished feeding His Lordship. There was nothing for it but to bed down and wait until the morning. Dei took down the curtain and hung up our wet things so that the warmth of us would help to dry them in the night. I went to sleep on the floor of the
vardo,
with Lijah next to me, hearing the clatter of the rain on the roof, which is a sound that has always helped me go to sleep. But there was also the not-so-nice tap-tapping of the drips from our wet clothes that smacked and busted against the polished floorboards, right close to my head. And these two sounds didn’t get along, for all they were both water, and they argued in my head until I went to sleep.

Lijah woke me at first light, and I fed him. I could tell from the movement of him that he’d dirtied his swaddling things and I had better change him. Dadus and Dei were still unmoving on the bed-box, so I levered myself up gently, with Lijah in the crook of my arm. The box where I kept his clean cloths was in the cabinet beneath where they slept, and it was hard to lift it out one-handed without disturbing them. When I opened the door to go outside, the cold, white light flooded the
vardo
’s shuttered darkness and I stepped out as quickly and carefully as I could, pulling it to behind me.

The rain had stopped during the night and, although it was chilly, the air was light, and there was that nice feeling you get when a horrible night has ended – like, whatever’s going to happen today’ll be better than yesterday, for certain. The grass was soaking, so I sat on the step and laid Lijah across my knees and unwrapped
his swaddling and cleaned him as best and quickly as I could. His little barrel body went blue with the cold and his arms and legs were flung wide and flailing against it. Then I wrapped him up again, hoisted him and tied him to me with my shawl.

I stood holding his dirty things, wondering what to do. I could just go back inside and stow them, but I didn’t know when Dei and me would next have the opportunity to boil some water and wash them out. There are some parts of Travelling with a babby that are not right easy. So’s I thought to myself, I’ll take a walk down the lane and see if there’s a stream nearby.

I had my heavy shawl on, but even so I went quickly. Lijah was awake, and looked up at me with those black eyes of his, as if he was wondering what I had just put him through and what I would do to him next. I talked to him as I walked. ‘You’ve nobbut yourself to blame,
amaro chavo. Akai, adoi, atchin tan or duva in the biti drom in a brishenesky cheerus,
you’ve to be wiped …’ He gave a squirm, and screwed up his face, as if he wanted to cry but couldn’t quite decide if it was worth the effort. ‘
Kushti
tikner mush
…’ I soothed him.

We’d been down this way before and I had a memory of a ditch with a stream beyond the crossroads. The Fens is like that. You get water almost anywhere. I found it right enough, no more than a trickle, but enough to unfold the swaddlings and lay them flat on the stones beneath the water, weighted down. Dei said how she’d seen babies die of not having their swaddlings changed enough, of how the skin got reddened until it swelled and cracked and the babies got a fever. She thought it dreadful some mothers didn’t realise that – although I have to say my Dei was hard on other mothers as only a woman who has lost three children can be.

I can still remember squatting by that stream, Lijah strapped to my chest, looking up at me with his eyes wide, while I watched the clear water run over the yellow staining of the swaddling clothes. I can remember thinking how it was good to have a mother who
told you what was what. How would I have managed Lijah without her there to tell me?

It was the last time I was happy and ignorant like that. Happy, despite the cold. Clear water running. My baby on my chest, dark eyed and knowing everything.

As I was walking back to the lay-by, I saw them, standing by the
vardo.
There was two of them, one of them holding their horses’ harnesses, the other a-banging on the side of our wagon. ‘Dei! Dadus!’ I shouted in warning. The men heard me and looked round.

I began to run towards them, but I couldn’t go so fast with Lijah strapped to me and the wet swaddling in the crook of one arm. While I was still some yards away, Dadus came down the step, pulling his braces over his shirt. The men turned to him.

I reached them as they were showing Dadus a piece of paper. As I ran up, Dadus glanced at me and said, all cross-sounding. ‘Lem, go inside.’

‘Is it all right, Dadus?’ I whispered.

‘Go inside,’ he said.

Inside our
vardo,
Dei was pulling on her outer things. Her face was set.

‘Dei, it’s the gavvers …’ said. ‘What do they want?’

‘Same thing they always want,’ said Dei, and I could hear in her voice that, though she was trying to sound casual, she didn’t feel that way at all.

‘Pack stuff up,’ she said, and together we began to roll blankets and stow the eider. Having Lijah strapped to me made me slow and clumsy but he had gone back to sleep and I didn’t want to shift him.

The door opened, and Dadus came in. He stood there for a minute, looking at us.

‘They want my hawking licence,’ he said.

I looked at him, and at Dei, and I knew in that minute that we all
had the same stricken look on our faces. Dadus had let his licence run out before Christmas.
Joseph Smith, Hawker of licensed goods, Knives, Kettles and Sundry Kitchenware.
It cost two pound to renew it, and he said he’d get another when he’d been to the wholesalers at Whittlesey as there was no point ’til then. But
Licensed Hawker
is what he called himself, and the gavvers wanted the proof.

‘Show them the old one,’ said Dei. She lifted the lid to the high chest.