The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [15]
The old woman spoke. ‘He thinks you might be a forest constable or a gamekeeper who might not be keen on us here.’
Wanting very much to stay in this comfortable loose nest of a place, with the free people, John declared himself. ‘I’m homeless myself, sleeping nearby. And often I’ve been arrested by gamekeepers.’ This was true: he’d often been mistaken for a poacher as he skulked and wrote his poems, a man with no reason to be in that place but being there.
‘What’s your name?’
‘John. John Clare.’
‘Well, I’m Judith Smith. I take you as an acceptable man, John Clare, pale and lorn, albeit well fed, whoever you are. I smell the wrong in men, crosswise intentions, and I don’t smell that in you, with your foolish open face. I’m known for my duckering, and my predictions have proved most accurate, most accurate.’
‘I know many ballads. I can sing, if you like.’
Judith Smith laughed and pulled a twig from the fire to light her pipe.‘Later, if you like when the others get back. Quick at making friends, ain’t I? The chavvies are fearful, but they’ll simmer down.’
John looked round at the children, four or five of them keeping their distance, as the one who’d whispered to her sprinted back to them.
‘Chavvies ought to be fearful,’ John said. ‘It might save them now and again.’
‘It’s possible. Will you sit, then? You can keep the yog going till we’ve something to cook. That’s why they’s worrying. Fellers have gone off to get something to eat, you see, and they don’t want it ruined.’
‘Quite right,’ John said.
So John sat beside her and poked the fire, turning its sticks to keep it burning while the chavvies gradually lost their fear and ran over to sprinkle dry leaves on, waiting for the ones that caught and lifted on wandering, pirouetting flights that drifted at times excitingly towards them.The old woman offered John a wooden pipe to smoke, its stem dented with yellow tooth marks, but he showed her his own. He drew whistling sour air through it to check it would draw, then filled it from a twist of tobacco she had. That wrapper of old newspaper was probably the only bit of printed matter in the place and John smiled to see it put to good use, its smudged words unread, its sharp voices sounding in nobody’s mind. He lit his pipe with a burning twig. They talked about the weather and the plants. Long silences between thoughts were filled with the sound of the fire and the ceaseless sound of wind through the branches, bird flights, scurryings.
Younger women emerged from the caravans - they must have been hiding there the whole time - and John made himself known to them. They seemed less certain of his presence than Judith Smith, offering the bare bones of greetings as they went about their business, rinsing pots, gathering more wood for the fire, smacking dirt from the chavvies’ clothes. John liked the brisk, free, tumbled life around him and watched it affectionately as the fire grew ruddier against the weakening light.
The men’s voices returned a few minutes before they did. By then the fire had been enlarged and pots arranged. As the voices approached, the children stopped burying each other in leaves and even pushed their hair back out of their faces. The dog, frantic, barked and ran in tight circles to bark again. It ran off to meet the men and returned ahead of the party with a few rangy lurchers and a blurring number of other terriers.
When John saw the men and the deer slung between two of them, covered in a blanket but still obvious, he knew what all the caginess had been about. He stood up immediately to introduce himself. ‘I’m John Clare, a traveller, and always a friend of the gypsies. I bring cordial greetings from Abraham and Phoebe Smith of Northamptonshire.’
‘He’s a good fellow,’ Judith attested.‘Knows the plants and cures as well as we do. He must’ve been long with those Smiths