After the Mourning (5 page)

It was late afternoon when I arrived and I came into the forest in the same way I’d done on my first visit to the Gypsy camp with Horatio. This time, however, my path was quickly blocked by a couple of rough lads I’d seen briefly at Rosie’s wake. Dressed in cut-down trousers and faded flat caps, neither of them could have been older than fifteen.

‘Who are you?’ the taller and younger of the two asked me, as he sucked nervously on his short clay pipe.

I removed my hat and was about to answer him when a man I recognised as Rosie and Lily’s father approached. ‘It’s the undertaker,’ he said to the boys, and then, to me, he added, ‘We made full payment for my girl.’

‘Yes, Mr Lee,’ I said, ‘of course you did.’

‘Then why have you come? You’re not a believer in miracles.’

He was maybe my age, maybe younger, it was difficult to tell. When a face is as brown and lined as Mr Lee’s, it could be almost any age you care to mention. All I could see with any degree of certainty was the contempt that crossed the deep-set eyes, which were almost hidden by his battered felt hat, as he used the word ‘miracle’. But, then, he was a Gypsy and, Lily notwithstanding, I had expected no more nor less.

‘I wanted to see what was happening for myself, Mr Lee,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard so much since I was here last week.’

‘The women do no wrong reading palms and cards for the
gauje
,’ Lee said, as he gazed across at several women sitting over by ‘Lily’s’ tree reading the palms of a group of blonde-haired girls. ‘My wife, she even reads for the soldiers.’

‘The Military Policemen?’

He shrugged. ‘The soldiers keep the people back from my daughter.’

‘I expect some people would like to touch her,’ I said, remembering what had happened when the ‘miracle’ had first occurred. Vague memories of stories about Lourdes and how the local folk had wanted to touch Bernadette came into my mind.

‘Lily keeps to her tent,’ Mr Lee replied. ‘She has the Head for company. Come and have some tea with me, undertaker.’

I suppose that even those who are completely convinced about the existence of the ‘unseen’ can’t believe in everything. But I was still shocked that Mr Lee should dismiss Lily’s ‘miracle’ while making out the famous Head to be as real as the grass on the ground. But then, as I drew nearer to his tent and I saw the beast that was tethered in front of it, I felt that maybe it had been the showman talking when Mr Lee had spoken about the Head.

‘This here is Bruno,’ the Gypsy said, as he rubbed the bear’s head with a large, rough hand. ‘He likes to dance.’

Down on all fours, as he was now, Bruno didn’t look that big. Brown in colour, he was a bedraggled chap and where the chain that tethered him to the ground met the collar at his neck there was a bald patch, which, though not inflamed, did not look comfortable. As he stared up at me I had the feeling that the bear didn’t trust me, but why should he? I’m human and humans make him dance, most probably when he’d rather be doing something else. Beyond stunt-riding acts, I’m not a great one for animal turns.

‘Bruno comes from the forests where my wife was born.’ Mr Lee invited me to sit down with him outside his tent and watch the kettle come to the boil over his fire. We sat in silence, which is something Gypsies do very well, in my opinion. Only later when the tea was made were we joined by others, all men, including Rosie’s husband, Edward. Not one of the other men addressed or even appeared to notice the tall, thin
gaujo
with the top hat sitting next to Mr Lee. But they put questions to me, in their own Romany language, through him. They could all, including Edward, speak English, but seemed to choose not to. I thought at the time there might be something in the Gypsies’ traditions about certain individuals not speaking directly to
gauje
after funerals. And maybe there is, but I know no more about that peculiar conversation now than I did then.

‘He asks, why do you think so many people come to see what only my daughter can see?’ Mr Lee said, as he twitched his head in the direction of a ragged, elderly man on his left.

‘Well, I suppose it’s because what Lily sees, or says she sees, is the Virgin Mary, Jesus’s mother,’ I replied. That was what the papers were reporting and what I had heard with my own ears. ‘What does Lily herself say about it?’

Mr Lee shrugged and would, I believe, have remained silent if Lily’s brother-in-law had not been about to speak. Mr Lee cut Edward off mid-breath. ‘Lily talks to the Head.’

I knew that since the first ‘vision’ Lily hadn’t been out of her tent. That was why there were so many people in the forest: they were waiting for the next dramatic development. The Duchess, who – sadly from Father Burton’s point of view – was very interested in what was happening up in the forest, had told me that at Lourdes Bernadette’s Lady had made several appearances scattered over a few weeks. Those visions and the later ones in Portugal towards the end of the Great War involved people being cured of illnesses and prophecies being made. And, of course, those were the real reasons why so many people had dragged themselves up to the forest. I was looking out now at not just a sea of Catholics but of Protestants, Jews and probably a few Hindus too. People in wartime need answers, and if those answers are miraculous, well . . .

‘The Head, Mr Lee,’ I said, ‘what—’

‘My daughter makes her living from the Head,’ Mr Lee cut in sharply. ‘If you’ve sixpence you can see it.’

I did, so I put my hand into my waistcoat pocket to retrieve the coin but was stopped before I could think of handing it over. ‘Not now,’ Mr Lee said, with a frown. ‘As I said, my daughter is talking to it, alone.’

Then he, and I, looked across at Lily’s tent and the group around the fire became silent as the daylight slowly faded into night. Even when the sirens went, none of them moved. I, of course, sprang to my feet as if I’d been shot from a gun. Even though I was out in the open, which is far preferable to being inside the shelter or the shop, I wasn’t yet on the move and I needed to be. I lifted my hat to take leave of my hosts but, as I always do at these times, I could only stutter my apologies. ‘I, er, I, m-m-must . . .’

‘Yes, you must run from death,’ Mr Lee said, with what appeared to me an unusual amount of understanding.

‘Th-thank you . . .’

‘We must all run and hide from death,’ he continued, and then he said, ‘but you don’t have to worry about that tonight, undertaker. Tonight you will come to no harm. The bombs will miss you.’

I ran from Mr Lee’s fire and the company of the silent Gypsies and headed towards the path that snakes around the edge of the pond. The way Mr Lee had spoken about death led me to think that his own view of it was possibly as something human beings could outwit. Death played games that we could win, if we were careful. I wondered whether it was the Gypsies’ knowledge of this game that gave them their so-called predictive powers. After all, if you know how an enemy thinks you’re half-way towards defeating him, or so I’ve heard.

The first explosions came as I was trotting past what must have been the last duck left on Eagle Pond. Poor scrawny object, it didn’t know whether to run from the vast yellow and orange lights in the sky or from me when I drew level with it. Had I been in my right mind at that time I would have had the bird, wrung its neck and taken it home for Sunday dinner. But by that time I had gone far beyond 1940 and the poor old docks getting a pasting yet again, well away from the duck and how nice he might go with a couple of spuds and some runner beans. The blood from the trenches was dripping into my brain, the screams of those drowning in mud throbbing in my ears. I ran and ran until I couldn’t breathe another breath and then I sat down in the middle of the Snaresbrook Lane and I cried.
Christ Almighty
, I remember thinking when dawn finally came,
if Lily is waiting for some sort of message from her Lady it had better be a good one
. Atheist I might be but I needed a miracle just as much as the rest of the poor sods laid out on their little bits of blanket in the forest – waiting. Mr Lee had been right, though: I’d not come to any harm that night. I started to make my way home through the mist-covered woodland. I had completely forgotten to collect any twigs.

‘You’ve got to stop buggering off like this, Frank!’ Aggie said, as she pulled me in through the shattered front door of the shop. ‘Look at this mess! The Duchess is beside herself!’

‘Ag—’

‘We’re three women on our own,’ my sister continued. ‘I know you have your problems, Frank, but we can’t cope. Bomb come down over Balaam Street and we caught the blast. Look at it!’

It wasn’t only the shop: all the windows at the front of the flat had blown in and the blackout curtains hung in ribbons, fluttering into the street. Balaam Street is a fair way from us, coming off the opposite side of the Barking Road, so the bomb that hit down there must have been big. I shoved what was left of the shop door shut with my foot and stared down at my desk, which was now covered with a thick layer of broken glass.

The Duchess, who stood between the black curtains at the back of the shop, said, ‘You’ll have to get Walter and Arthur to board everything up when they get in.’ Mainly she was exhausted and smelt strongly of friar’s balsam, which she’d been sniffing for some days now in an attempt to ward off a cough.

‘Yes, I know.’

Of course, a lot of businesses had been boarded up since early September. Compared to some we had been lucky. But I still didn’t like it. Boarded-up businesses had plucky slogans like ‘Still here!’ painted over where their windows had once been; boarded-up businesses worked in darkness.

‘Francis . . .’ My mother began to cough again.

‘Why don’t you go back upstairs, Duchess?’ I said hardly able to look her in the face. ‘Make a cup of tea.’

‘I would if the kitchen were not covered with glass,’ she replied, in a tone that was harsh for her. ‘The blast has shot the glass from the parlour right through to the kitchen sink.’

I glanced up at her, aware that I had tears in my eyes. ‘Mum, you’re not well. I’m sorry . . .’

‘Francis, I have a cold, I am not about to die,’ the Duchess replied.

‘Yes, but I should’ve been here.’

‘Blimey, Mr H, what’s all this?’

I turned to see Walter Bridges, our occasional pallbearer, push open what was left of the shop door and crunch his way across the glass-strewn floor towards me. He looked around doubtfully, took off his hat and said, ‘You’re going to need this boarded up, you know.’

‘Yes, Walter,’ I said, as I turned away from the strong smell of beer on the old fellow’s breath. Walter isn’t as young or as sober as he might be, but with all the young men in the forces who can choose their workers? ‘A job for you and young Arthur, I think.’

‘Well, if you have any boards, Mr H, I—’

‘This is an undertaker’s business, Walter,’ I said. ‘The one thing we have plenty of is wood.’

‘What? Coffins?’

‘No!’ I’ve never been able to work out whether Walter is lazy or stupid or both. ‘The off-cuts is what I mean. Bloody hell, Walter, the carpenter’d skin me if I boarded my windows up with his coffins.’

Our carpenter is the younger brother of a bloke who was in the first lot with me. When the Great War started there were four lads in that family. Only our carpenter, who was too young to go into the forces, survived. Now he makes coffins for us and for some of the other firms round here. He’s a good lad, and rather than throwing away the off-cuts or taking them for himself, he lets us have them. And if the Duchess hadn’t been so careful with the fire we would have burnt the lot. While Walter went out the back – to fetch a load of planks and nails, I hoped – I looked across at my mother.

‘Thrift is a sacred word,’ she said, as she smiled at me. ‘Did you bring any twigs back from the forest with you, son?’

I was about to own up to having become, once again, a mad, frightened fool when the door opened on a small group of men wearing the uniform of the Corps of Military Police. The man at their head – who wore sergeant’s stripes – saluted and took off his helmet. ‘Mr Hancock?’ he said, in a voice I’ve always associated rather more with commissioned officers.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can I help you, Sergeant?’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Can I have a word?’ He was, I imagined, about twenty-eight, well-built and very blond. Aggie, who is partial to that type of fellow, was smiling like a person with tetanus.

‘Well, as you can see, Sergeant—’

‘Williams,’ he interrupted. ‘Corps of Military Police.’

‘Sergeant Williams,’ I said, ‘we’ve taken a bit of damage here so if you want a chat it might be better if we go out the back to my store-room.’

‘That should be all right.’

I was about to ask Aggie to organise some tea for the sergeant and his blokes when Walter came bustling in with a bundle of planks in his arms. ‘You know you’ve got a stiff out there, don’t you, Mr H?’ he said. ‘Some fat geezer.’

Mr Alexander McCulloch had dedicated his life to the butchering trade, which meant that he had had little time for relationships, much less marriage. He’d also been a mean, unpleasant old sod, which was why I’d ended up with him rather than his one surviving relative, his brother. ‘Keep him down at your place until the funeral, will you, Mr Hancock?’ Albert McCulloch had pleaded. ‘There’ll be an extra ten bob in it for you.’

I smiled at Sergeant Williams. ‘I’ll just go and sort it out round there.’

Calling Aggie to help with the refreshments, I went outside to tidy Alexander McCulloch away into the backyard. As I left I heard the sound of Walter hammering misshapen planks across what had once been our windows. Soon Hancocks would be trading in darkness.

Sergeant Williams took the delicate little cup and saucer, one of the Duchess’s best, from Aggie with a smile.

‘Two sugars?’ she breathed.

‘Thank you,’ he said, then waited patiently for my sister to leave. She took her time until she flashed a glance inadvertently at me and saw my expression. She didn’t notice that he wasn’t showing the slightest interest in her. He was probably a good ten years, maybe even more, her junior.