An Incomplete Revenge (12 page)

Beulah reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of wood. She held it to her mouth and began to chew. She was quiet for a moment, then regarded Maisie, shaking her head. “The
moosh
is a
dinlo.”
The man is a fool. She stopped chewing and put the wood back in her pocket.

“Have you had dealings with him?” asked Maisie.

At that moment, Webb came into the clearing holding an armful of wood. He set the fuel alongside the fire and nodded to his wife, Paishey, and to Esther. The women took a couple of logs each and added them to the fire, holding their white aprons lest they be caught by sparks spitting out from the wood.

Beulah shook her head. “Not directly.” She pronounced it
direckly,
her eyes on Webb as she spoke.

Maisie turned and found that, once again, he was watching her, this time with eyes narrowed as a gust of wind pushed gray woodsmoke in his direction.

“Hello, Mr. Webb.” Maisie smiled, just enough, she hoped, to break the shell of ice that always seemed to envelop Beulah’s son.

He touched his hat in greeting and left the clearing, returning with more wood. She thought it might be better if she delayed the asking of questions until bellies were full and the warm fire had worked magic on aching backs. She had only picked for a short time, but already she felt the soreness in her hands and arms where
rough hop-bines had scored the skin, leaving welts that stung when she washed. These people—men, women and children—had worked for days, and even after the picking was done the women had gathered flowers to bind into bunches, or made lilies of colored tissue paper to sell door-to-door, while the menfolk hunted or fashioned clothes pegs from wood to take to market.

Soon the rich aroma of a broth well simmered teased Maisie’s taste buds and caused her stomach to rumble. The women brought enamel plates from their respective vardos and gathered to dish up the meal. At the edge of the clearing, children lined up to be washed from bowls set aside for the purpose, and the men began to come in from their work.

Maisie followed the conversation, spoken in an English that was scoured of embellishment and peppered with dialect. For the most part, their stories mirrored those of the Londoners. They spoke of the hops in this garden or that, of the farmer, the tallyman, and how much they had earned. They talked of the clouds in the distance and were glad their tarpaulins were at the ready. Beulah complained of a toothache that had spread to her jaw, and one of the children squealed when a hot, wet flannel cloth was rubbed along his arms.

She heard Paishey telling Esther that the
gorja-rawni
—the woman who was not a gypsy—who had smiled upon her little Boosul, had turned her back today as they passed on the way to the tap. Esther put her hands on her hips and shook her head. She wagged a finger, telling Paishey that the woman wasn’t any different from all the rest of them and would probably cook her baby for tea if she had the chance, because she was—as likely as not—a
beng
, a devil. Maisie stared into the fire. Was it worth putting the story right? Should she tell them that the woman grieved for her own lost daughter, had felt warmed as the gypsy baby nestled in her arms, and was now shrouded in a chill of prejudice that enveloped her because her people didn’t trust the gypsies and were wary of
them? No, probably not. She would keep her counsel. After all, the tribe suffered too, from the virulence of fear.

Paishey brought a plate of rabbit stew with a wedge of bread for Beulah, who pointed to Maisie and nodded, indicating that a plate should also be offered to their guest. A portion was brought for the outsider, and as steam wafted up from her food, Maisie’s mouth watered and she smiled at Paishey. “Thank you. This smells lovely.” Paishey said nothing, acknowledging the gratitude with a brief nod, and continued handing round enamel plates, with those of the men holding a good third of a measure more than the women.

There was little talk as the company devoured the awaited meal. Then the empty plates were cleared and slops from the pot taken to the edge of the clearing for the dogs, though Beulah’s jook was fed first, on account of her catching the tribe’s end-of-day meal.

Maisie made her move. “Why are the people in the village so afraid, Aunt Beulah?”

Beulah laughed, though it came out as a cackle, making her sound like a
chovihanni,
a witch. “Them’s too afraid of their own shadows. Them’s looking over their shoulders, waiting for the ghosts to see them.”

“What ghosts? What do you mean?”

Beulah shook her head. “Them ghosts that feed on all of us, the ghosts of them as we’ve done wrong by”

“But that could be anyone anywhere. There’s someone in every village who has done something wrong, but those places don’t feel like Heronsdene.”

Now the gypsy woman sighed, and Maisie, drawn to look over her shoulder, saw Webb walking toward them. Beulah turned to her and said, “It’s all a long time gone, but not what they hold of it.”

Webb leaned forward to whisper in Beulah’s ear, and Maisie watched as some of the gypsies, men and women, went to their tents, returning with fiddles and tambourines, wooden sticks and
whistles. Paishey emerged from her vardo with a violin case in her arms, which she passed to Webb. Maisie noticed that the other rom carried their fiddles with much less care than Paishey and Webb had demonstrated. And even as Webb clicked open the case and lifted his violin from the faded golden velvet in which it was cocooned, it was with reverence, as if the instrument were a religious icon.

He lifted the violin to his ear, picked at the strings, tensioning them to tune, and then pressed it under his chin, to sound chords and test the notes. The other gypsies were creating a cacophony of sound, yet Webb had closed his eyes as if they did not exist, as if the world around him had receded like the tide, leaving only soft, untouched sand. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the company. Silence fell upon the group, as Webb lifted his bow to the strings and teased out notes that caused tears to form in Maisie’s eyes. So skilled was Webb that it was as if he had become, in an instant, one with the violin, its fine maple tinted with a reddish-gold varnish reflecting flames that leaped up between the musicians and their audience. He played a lament, and as she listened it was as if the whole forest had become silent, had stopped to listen to the gypsy and his violin. He quickened the pace, his foot now tapping out a faster beat, his head moving from side to side, as he sawed the bow across the strings. Then he looked up, nodding to his fellow fiddlers as the lament became a jig. They joined in with strings squealing as bows were pushed back and forth, back and forth, all of them keeping pace with Webb, like pilgrims following their master along a winding and leaping path.

Two gypsy women emerged into the clearing, their tambourines flying, their feet barely touching the ground as they leaped in dance. Children banged sticks together, or rattled stones in a can, and soon most of the company were yipping and pounding their feet to the rhythm set by Webb. There was no pause, no lingering between this tune and the next, just a glance from Webb to his
band, who were now playing and dancing along. Only Beulah and Maisie remained seated, the old lady clapping her hands on her knees, while Maisie felt the beat seep up from the ground and into her soul. The music was raw and tumultuous, swollen with the rhythm of passion, the taut scream of exhilaration. Oh, how she wanted to dance, how she wanted to feel each note in every cell of her being as she stamped her feet and clapped her hands. How she wanted to belong to the moment, as the gypsies did with their dance.

She saw Webb meet his wife’s eyes with his own and, still dancing, Paishey made her way around the fire to Maisie. With leaping flames reflected in her eyes, she took Maisie’s hands and tried to pull her to her feet, into the group of gypsies. Maisie shook her head, protesting that she could not dance and was happy just to listen, to watch, but her words were drowned by the music. With the gypsy still grasping her hands, and on the verge of panic, she looked around to Beulah, who motioned with her hand that she should join the dance. She felt the barrier of fear paralysing her, fear of what might happen if she gave herself to the music, to the power of the gypsy dance.

Paishey pulled on Maisie’s hands again, this time drawing her into the throng. There was no going back without causing offense, nothing to do but allow all reticence to fall away. She felt the throbbing pulse of the music echo up from the forest floor into her bones, making its way straight to her heart as she danced a dance that was primitive and unreserved. This was no gentle fox-trot, no metered modern swing, and she gave herself to it. Time and again she danced, for even when the tempo changed, the music did not stall but went on and on, to the edge of night.

Later, when Beulah looked up to the stars and motioned to her son, the gaiety came to an end and it was time for Maisie to leave. Knowing they needed to rest now, Maisie insisted that she did not need a chaperone to accompany her to her motor car. Two gypsies
would have had to leave the group, for they did not hold with a woman being alone with a man who was not her husband, nor with a gypsy woman returning to the tribe alone. Smiling and still a little breathless, Maisie thanked one and all, for her meal and for being included in the evening’s dancing, and then made to leave. As she turned, Beulah whistled and then pointed to the lurcher, who came to Maisie’s side. She raised her hand in acknowledgment and left the clearing, the dog at heel.

Across a field damp with evening dew, a sign of tomorrow’s looming showers, Maisie walked on, the lurcher’s paws soft on the ground, her cold nose reaching up to touch Maisie’s hand every few steps. Soon they reached the MG, the dog standing back as Maisie unlocked the door and took her place behind the steering wheel.

“Go on now, jook, go home.” Maisie pointed toward the field they had just crossed. The lurcher turned and slinked away into the night, though as Maisie drove to the road and glanced back, she could see the animal’s eyes, glistening like crystal beads in the darkness as she waited until Maisie was gone.

WAKING IN THE
middle of the night from a deep and dreamless sleep, her eyes heavy, her heart slow, Maisie was sluggish in establishing her bearings, and it was some seconds before she remembered that she was in her room at the village inn. But what had woken her? She turned and then sat up, now wakeful and alert in her pitch-black room. She raised her nose to smell the air.
Smoke.
She drew back the covers and ran across to the window to see whether the smell might be lingering in her clothes, which had absorbed the aroma of the gypsies’ campfire. She’d washed her blouse and left it to hang by an open window, along with her skirt, hoping the night breeze would blow away all traces of wood smoke. Reaching for the fabrics, she pressed her nose to them—barely a memory of the evening lingered within the threads.

The acrid odor became stronger now, and as she leaned out of the window, she saw flames at the back of the inn. This was not a cozy campfire, controlled and alluring, but a ravaging conflagration borne of deliberate combustion. The coal shed was on fire, close to two outbuildings, including the one in which barrels of beer were stored. And in the distance, running from the inn’s long garden to the fields beyond, Maisie saw a man—or perhaps a woman.

Without wasting a moment, she grabbed her dressing gown and opened the door. “Fire! Fire! Wake up and get out! Fire!” There was not a moment to lose. Down the corridor she ran, banging on doors, and through another door that she supposed led to the quarters of the landlord and his family. “Fire! Fred—where are you? The inn’s on fire!”

There were voices behind her as she found the stairs by touch and made her way down. Light from the flames outside now illuminated her way, and she ran straight to the kitchen, then out to the scullery. A heavy mop bucket stood in the sink. Maisie twisted the tap and left it to run as she searched for another bucket. Fred was soon behind her, along with his wife.

“Get everyone out, Mary! Out to the front, and raise the alarm!”

The next twenty minutes passed in a blur, as she and the landlord, soon joined by villagers summoned by the tolling of the church bell, came to help, buckets in hand. Back and forth they ran, then, when enough people had gathered, a chain was formed, passing buckets of water to the flames. At first, it seemed as if the fire would never abate, as if Loki, the god of fire and mischief, were dancing among them, taunting and snickering, igniting the flames as soon as they were doused. Then they began to win, and the water chain was drenching the blackened smoking ruin.

Exhausted, spent, Maisie, the landlord and the villagers who had come to help stood in silence in front of the remains of the
coal shed and an outbuilding. Waterlogged wood hissed and sizzled, and no one moved.

After first allowing the stillness to temper emotions that she knew would follow such an attack, Maisie touched the innkeeper on the arm. “Fred. We’d better not let this linger. It should be checked, then we should clean up.”

“Right you are, Miss Dobbs.” He looked around, then up at the inn. “I would’ve lost the lot if it weren’t for you. I owe you everything.”

“You would have smelled the fire soon enough.”

“A fire can do a day’s work in a minute.” He pursed his lips. “No, you’ve got a calm head on your shoulders, and we owe you. The men will help now, you go on back indoors. Mary will get a bath out for you.” He gave a half laugh. “She’s banking up the stove for more hot water now. Better tell her to go easy with the logs, eh?”

Maisie was silent for a moment longer. Still no one moved. “Why wasn’t the fire brigade called?”

“Takes too long. No station here—they would have had to come over from Paddock Wood.”

“But that’s not far. Who has a telephone in the village? The damage should be inspected, to ensure all traces of fire are gone, and the police must be called so that the person who did this is caught.”

“You go in to Mary, miss. We’ll look after it all now. These things happen. I’ve been building up the path here at night, with ashes from the fireplaces inside the inn. Like as not, it’s my fault for not making sure the embers were dead. Only takes a spark to get a fire going, especially near a coal bunker.” He stood straighter and squared his shoulders. “No, I blame myself. I should have known better.”