The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [78]
‘I’m not sure we can part with any more,’ her mother said to her father.
Her father coughed with tightly closed lips, then said, ‘They won’t leave us a stick. All these years of work. Not a matchstick. These Tennysons will have it all.’
Fulton entered then and stared with naked disgust at the sad gazes that met his, said nothing and went out, slamming the door.
Swish of leaves, of strong drink. One of them idly compressing a squeezebox, not playing, but pushing out a few quiet notes.The broth with hare’s meat hung over the fire, bubbles lumping up to the surface. And opposite, a row of the girls deft with short knives cutting pegs to sell, quick as coring apples.
Judith was telling him of the two missing men.
‘Said we’s an atrocious tribe and that we ought to be made outlaws from every civilised kingdom. These are his words I’m telling you. And that we ought to be exterminated from the face of the earth. Exterminated.’
‘And him a clergyman.’
‘A Christian man.’
‘Or pretends to be,’ said John.
‘That’s it. Or pretends to be. It was common land a few months back and what grew and bred on it was common as God’s air. Now it’s the railway’s and the boys are gaoled. And you could only tell it from signs they couldn’t read, not having the art. Now it’s chavvies without their fathers.’
‘When will they be out?’
She shook her head as though they never would be, then said, ‘A year or two. Less, maybe, I reckon.’
‘And you’re all going away.’
‘Forest is a good place for us, good for food, but we’ve had too many night visits, been shaken in our vardas, and their dogs going mad. So now it’s down to Kent for a fair. We want to, matter of fact. All our people gather.’
‘To have fun at the fair.’
‘Not me,’ Judith answered. ‘I’ll talk is all I’ll do, maybe tell the odd fortune. One time of day, I used to get up at four o’clock in the morning. I could run or jump or do anything you mention. But today I’m useless. That one, she’ll have a livelier time of it.’ She pointed with her pipe stem at one of the peg-making girls. ‘She’ll be seeing her lover boy there. See, the passion’s gone to her hands. Look at the mess she’s making.’
If the girl could hear, she pretended otherwise, whispering behind her hand to the girl on her left.
‘He’ll be there, will he?’ John asked immediately, unreasonably jealous.
‘He will. They haven’t see each other since they were not but nine years old, the pair of them, but they made promises and their words have been passed along in the meantime, their messages to each other, from mouth to ear between the travelling people, and now his people will be in Kent same as us.’
‘I see.’ John took another swig. ‘Got to go for a moment,’ he said, and stood up.
Soft light flaking through the leaves. He unbuttoned himself and let his stream go between the thick, down-diving roots of a hornbeam, his belly resting on his right foream. He thought about the girl, her love, the lovers’ separate paths through the world that now would join, reuniting them, fusing at last. The excitement that must be in her breast, the pure passion! In John as well, the loneliness, the wandering and desire for home, for Mary. How she’d stayed true and steadfast while all the world went wrong. He felt his toes wet and looked down to see his puddle rolling against his boots. What a fool’s mistake: to piss uphill! This is what came of living between walls and pissing always into china. He dried his toecaps, digging furrows on the ground.
As he thrashed back through the branches, he called,