All The Days of My Life (11 page)

As I walked across the windy flats, I tried to explain to Allan how little I knew of this business. I did not want him to think I was deliberately keeping secrets from him.

“Don't worry,” said Allan, “and above all, don't tell me anything you shouldn't. Business is business, after all – and as far as I'm concerned we've had a good fortnight's holiday at your father's expense. I'm grateful for that.” He was a gentleman, Allan, if ever I met one. Perhaps it was better that he died in one of his country's last colonial wars. He never had to discover that his standards were no longer useful or respected, the service he had been reared to give was not needed any longer.

Over dinner that night I told my father of my meeting with Urania Heron. With some trepidation I told him what she had said about his only doing his master's bidding, like a dog. When he heard this he put down the knife he had lifted in order to cut a piece of cheese on his plate, and stared ahead at the candles on the table, burning in their candelabra. And he muttered, “I wish she had not said that.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“No matter,” he told me. “What else?” I told him, leaving out the woman's parting remark to me, which I felt was private. At the end of my account my father said, “As to never seeing her – she's wrong. I most surely will see her. We'll start early tomorrow. You can take me to the spot. I must admit, I never thought I'd be involved in running a mad old gypsy to ground in the Romney Marshes and, God knows, I'm not superstitious but perhaps for the first time in my life I'm beginning to wonder – the old woman appears to know something – perhaps more than I do. I want to see her. Get an early night, Bert. We'll start at six tomorrow morning.”

My mother, who I knew had invited guests for dinner, merely said, “Do you think you'll be back by the evening?”

“Certainly,” said my father, with assurance.

And we were back for dinner the next night, but disappointed. To begin with, on the whole wide sweep of this spot in the misty and desolate marshes, we found no gypsies or caravans. We found where they had been. My father, approaching, was particularly appalled by the mess they had left behind. There was broken crockery, scattered, and splintered wood and, in the middle of what had been the campsite, a large fire still smoked. The fire had fallen apart untidily. Half-burned books, more charred pieces of wood – the leg of a table, the front of a drawer – and what looked like the back of a hairbrush, lay scattered in the smouldering ashes of the fire which had obviously been abandoned, and was going out.

But, standing in the middle of all this confusion my father and I both saw plainly that this was no ordinary abandoned campsite. It was plain that whole sets of dishes had been deliberately smashed and the fragments lying about were only part of the general breakage. Then my father pointed towards the beach. Near where the sea lashed and roared there was a caravan, half-burnt, its metal struts poking up like the skeleton of a vast animal. A thin plume of smoke waved up still from it and was dispersed by the wind as it hit the pyre in great gusts, throwing up little clouds of ash. We stood together on the deserted campsite, hearing only the crying of the gulls and the sound of the tide, not knowing what to think about the scene. Then, “What's that?” he said and moved beyond where the caravans had stood. I followed him. There, under a scrubby tree, was a plot of freshly dug earth. We both looked down at it. As we stared I heard voices on the wind and two small figures, holding their arms in mystifying positions, began to come towards us. As they approached through the foggy air we saw
that they were two ordinary looking men in Wellingtons and corduroy trousers. They carried spades over their shoulders. They looked intently at us as they came up. “Good morning,” said my father.

“Morning,” said one of them.

“Do you know what all this is about?” asked my father. “This seems to be a grave. What's happened to the caravan down there?” At this point I began to feel nervous. Some violence had been done, I thought, and here was my father, alone on these marshes, asking questions in his official-sounding voice. These two men might be the originators of whatever trouble had taken place.

“What's your interest in all this?” said the second man, who was middle-aged and unshaven.

“I'm not from the police, the council or the Customs and Excise, if that's what you're thinking,” said my father, who plainly had a better grasp on the situation than I had. “We're here to see one of the gypsies, on very private business. But when we arrived we found all this – and no gypsy camp. Do you know what has happened, or where they might have gone to?”

At this, both men seemed easier about the situation although they still looked as if they might have something to hide.

“Gypsy funeral,” said the first man. “Leastways, they burned the body in Rye churchyard. There was more than a hundred present – some of them must have set off before she died, they reckon. But they broke her pots and pans and burned the van. It's their custom, see.”

“Ah,” said my father. “Of course. Was it the old woman, Urania Heron, who died?”

“That was her,” said the first man. “Urania – some called her Queen of the Gypsies, though maybe that was to get custom. They have a fair old number of Kings and Queens, the travelling people. Died a rich woman, so they tell me.” The other man was looking at my father shrewdly. He had him placed as some kind of official, in spite of his denials. He said, “If you're from the Inland Revenue, even you can't catch up with her now. And you'll have no luck with the survivors, either.”

“Mm,” said my father. Turning to me he said, “She said I'd never talk to her.”

I just nodded. The two men stood silent. The second one said, “Well – if you want to find them they'll have flown to the four winds by now.” It became plainer and plainer they were waiting for us to leave. In the end the second man said, “Come on, then. Let's get on with it.”

The other looked at my father and muttered, “As a matter of fact, we're here for the horse.” And he nodded at the patch of earth.

Light dawned on Father's face, “Ah,” he said. “I knew it couldn't be a human grave. This is where they've buried the horse?”

“They normally kill the horse, see,” the man told him. “Not that hers was good for much anyway – old as she was, it looked. So we thought we'd come for the carcase – sell it, like. No good to anyone stuck where it is, is it?”

“No,” said my father. “Don't worry – I'm not from the Inland Revenue. I came to have my fortune told,” he continued boldly. “They say the old woman could tell the future.”

Both men stared incredulously at my father. A less likely customer for the crystal ball and mumbo-jumbo of the gypsy's tent could not have been imagined.

“The women reckoned she could,” was all the stubble-faced man could say. “I don't go in for a lot of that myself. What's the good knowing if you can't do anything about it, that's what I say?”

“I expect you're right,” said my father.

“If you'll excuse us now,” he said, “we'll get on. In case by chance they come back. They can get very nasty, them Romany men.”

“We'll leave you to it, then,” Father said. “Thank you for the information.”

“You're welcome,” they said, and turned to their grisly work.

We walked away from the sea, hearing the gulls' noise overhead and the thud of the spades behind us. We walked across the soggy marshland to the car. “That's that, then,” my father said into the wind, “– no fortune-teller for me. Pity.”

“I expect it's all nonsense anyway,” said I.

“I daresay,” he said. “But I wish I'd met her.”

The war was over and Mary Waterhouse was sitting on the same train which had brought her to Framlingham four years before. Then she had been nearly five years old. Now she was nine. Then she was with all the other evacuees. Now she travelled with Mrs Gates, who was sitting opposite her. And then she had been a poorly dressed cockney girl while now she had about her the indefinable air of a nanny's child, sitting up nice and straight in her highly polished brown sandals, very white socks and slightly starched pink and white striped cotton dress, with a small white collar. Her blonde hair was done in two plaits, which ended in pink bows.

She stared doubtfully at Mrs Gates. Then she dutifully picked up the green-bound volume of
Gulliver's Travels
, which, with its companion volume,
Robinson Crusoe
, had been Sir Frederick Allaun's sad parting present to her, and began to read. Mrs Gates sat there like a stone with the waves of semi-formulated resentments going through her head, as they had now for many days and weeks. Why hadn't those shiftless parents of Mary's come and collected her straight away, as soon as they got Lady Allaun's letter? It wasn't good enough to send an ill-written scrawl a week later, saying they were having a street party and couldn't spare the time to come down with the baby – a baby which must be three years old by now, by her calculations. A party, indeed – not to mention the suggestion that Mary should be put on the train, alone, and that they'd meet her at Victoria. What sort of people put a child of nine on a railway train alone, with the trains and streets full of demobbed soldiers and goodness knows who? And the cheeky suggestion that Mary should stay on and come home with the others in the care of a welfare worker. What business was it of theirs to make such a suggestion, when Lady Allaun had told them in so many words that Mary's room was needed for a relative, a convalescent naval
officer? They must be a trashy, common lot, these Waterhouses. Advantage-takers, that's what they were. Not that poor Mrs Twining's heart wouldn't break when she had to part with Jack. And his friend Ian, but Mrs Gates had the idea that it was young Jack Bessie Twining was particularly fond of. She was herself, for that matter. Still, what had to be, had to be. She just wondered if these Waterhouses would appreciate what a good and clever lad he was when he got back. Of course, Twining could make the excuse that he needed the lads to stay on for the harvest – she just hoped that when they got to the station this “Mrs Ivy Waterhouse”, as she had signed herself, would be there on time, to meet them. They sounded like a badly organized lot, with their parties and late replies to letters. All she could say, Mrs Gates thought to herself, was that if there was any confusion at the station she'd turn straight round, with Mary, and get the next train back. Let Ivy Waterhouse arrive late and she could whistle for her daughter. They'd be on the train back to Framlingham in a flash and home in time for a late tea.

Mrs Gates gave a deep sigh of anger – and found tears in her eyes. Mary looked up from her book and said, “Oh – Mrs Gates –”

“None of that,” said Mrs Gates in a firm, cross voice. Mary went back to her book. She was very nervous. Mrs Gates sat up, ramrod straight, fighting her misery at parting with Mary by overlaying it with rage. There was another battle in her breast, too, where old-fashioned loyalty to her employers quarrelled with dislike, even bewilderment. For what Mrs Gates could not quite acknowledge openly to herself was that it had been wrong of Lady Allaun to write so summarily to the Waterhouses, more or less ordering them to remove the child within three weeks. The reasons behind it were shoddy and Mrs Gates also knew that. Who should know better than she, who had begun in service at the Towers when she was sixteen, and Sir Frederick only a child? – she who had looked after them, sick and well, for nearly forty years – who had been one of the only two servants invited to Sir Frederick and Lady Allaun's wedding at St James, Piccadilly? Mrs Gates knew the eddies and currents of the house as she knew her own pulse and the beating of her heart. But she could never truly admit what she knew to herself, even in thought. Servants should not talk of what they know about their masters; good servants are well advised not even to think of what they know. So Mrs Gates, in the railway carriage, trained her mind on the misdeeds of the imaginary Water-houses to prevent the sadness and disillusion she felt from welling up.
Unfortunately, matching the puffing of the engine as it took them remorselessly towards London, came the word “adoption – adoption – adoption,” as though it were hissing out of the funnel of the train. For the word had, and she knew it, been mentioned between Sir Frederick and Lady Allaun. An important letter had been written and the reply, which Mrs Gates had not seen arrive, had given support for the idea. The family solicitor had been summoned. Mrs Gates, without listening at a single door or laying eyes on a single letter which had not been put away, knew all this. She knew, too, that Sir Frederick had been strongly in favour of trying to adopt Mary and Lady Allaun not so keen. That squared with what Mrs Gates knew of both of them. She, for her part, had no doubt that the Waterhouses would agree to the adoption and that Mary would shortly be the legal child of the house. So what had gone amiss?

Mrs Gates's thoughts, as the train got closer and closer to London, started coming with a rush. The summerhouse – it was what had happened in the summerhouse which had put a stop to everything.

The summerhouse lay at the very edge of the lawn at the front of Allaun Towers. It stood to the left, where the hedge surrounding the kitchen garden met the rhododendron bushes. If she had not been picking peas at the time, Mrs Gates would have seen nothing. As it was she had just flung a handful of pods into her basket, which lay on the ground, and was straightening up for a moment to ease the pull on her back when she saw, over the hedge, through the rather dirty panes of the octagonal summerhouse, the child, Mary, and Sir Frederick. Mary was sitting on Sir Frederick's knee, that much she could make out, and he was apparently reading to her. The sight was not unusual. Sir Frederick often took Mary out of the house on days when she was not at school – and there had been many of these days, in April, when she had been away for three weeks with an obstinate throat infection. They would walk about the estate or, as now, go and read in the summerhouse, where there was an old basketchair, lodged in front of the doorway, which was wedged wide open due to the condition of its hinges. These reading sessions – in fact, Sir Frederick's association with Mary in general – did not entirely please Isabel Allaun, Mrs Gates knew. Truth was – and that, at least, Mrs Gates was prepared to admit about her employer – Isabel Allaun was one of those women whose jealousy of other women was profound. It was not just a question of disliking women in genuine rivalry with her. It was automatic for her to see any woman, old, ugly, poor or nine years old as a challenge and to
look on them with disfavour. So even her husband's affection for a little girl threatened her. In addition Lady Allaun had been jumpy ever since Sir Frederick came back. He had arrived in a strange condition, vague, tired and absent-minded. It was as if he wanted to block most things out of his mind. He slept a great deal, avoided company and read a great many detective stories. He also, as Mrs Gates knew, for she heard him, prowled about the house at night. In the morning she would find he had made tea, eaten a couple of slices of toast and then, presumably, gone back to bed without washing up his cup and plate, which stood on the kitchen table in the morning, witnesses to his lonely night. It was not surprising that Isabel Allaun, who had held the house and grounds, the three tenant farms and the small household together, alone, for five difficult years, was upset. She had looked forward to her husband's return, an easing of conditions and a return to the good old days of trips to Town and entertaining the neighbours. And what had been sent back to her after five years was a weakened man who avoided leaving his own house and grounds as if he were afraid, refused to visit or be visited, continued to leave all the responsibility to her and could not, so Mrs Gates observed, even seem to look his wife in the eye. It was as if he felt guilty towards her, she thought. And well he might, for he knew what was required of him and could not, or would not, do it. It was not good enough to pass all your time reading or just wandering about hand in hand with a little girl. He would not even pay proper attention to his own son – he often found an excuse to leave the room when Tom came in, during the week he spent at home at half term, and this was also wrong, thought Mrs Gates, who privately considered that Tom was a boy very much in need of a father's hand.