Meridon

5

I don’t know what I had expected of Warminster but the little grey-stoned main street with the three or four shops and two good inns pleased me. It looked like a place where nothing very much had ever happened or would happen. I looked around the broad main street and imagined the weekly market which would be held there: the stalls selling flour and bread and cheeses, the noise of the beasts from the sheep and cattle market. I was glad we were spending the winter here. It looked like a place where Dandy would find little scope for her talents of coaxing silver out of the pockets of old gentlemen – I was glad of that.

I leaned forwards to look about me and Robert Gower smiled at my eagerness, said proudly, ‘Nearly there now,’ and took a sharp left-hand turn off the cobbled main street down an unpaved mud lane. I expected a one-room upstairs, two-rooms downstairs cottage with a low roof and paper and rags stuffed in the windows, with a little patch of a kitchen garden at the front, and a field for the horses at the back.

‘Gracious!’ Dandy said as the wagon turned in off the track and we found ourselves in a handsome stable yard.

Robert Gower smiled. ‘Surprised, little Miss Dandy?’ he asked with satisfaction. ‘I thought you would be! All your little nosiness into how much I earn and how much I pay never discovered that I’m a freeholder in a market town! Aye! I have a vote and all!’ he said triumphantly.

He pulled the wagon up and Dandy and I got down. I went without thinking to the ponies at the back and untied them and brought them round. Robert nodded at me.

‘Stabling I’ve got!’ he said. ‘Stabling for every one of them if I wanted them inside all winter eating their heads off and getting fat. They’ll go out in the fields of course, but if I wanted to keep them in I could. Every single one of them. Ten loose boxes I’ve got here! Not bad, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, and I spoke the truth. It was a miracle of hard work and careful planning to bring a man from poverty to this secret affluence. And I respected him all the more that he could leave this comfort to travel in the wagon and work every day of the week for a long arduous season.

A door in the wall of the yard opened and a grey-haired woman came out dressed in her best apron with a matching white mob cap. She dipped Robert a curtsey as if he were Quality.

‘Welcome home, sir!’ she said. ‘There’s a fire in the parlour and in your bedroom when you are ready to come in. Shall I send the lad out for your bags?’

‘Aye,’ Robert said. ‘And set tea for two in the parlour, Mrs Greaves. These two young women, Meridon and Dandy, will take their tea in the kitchen with you.’

She smiled pleasantly at me, but I frankly gaped at her. By travelling a few miles down a road Robert Gower had transformed himself into Quality. He and Jack made the transition. Dandy and I were what we always had been: Romany brats.

Jack saw the change too. He slid off Snow’s back and handed the reins to me as if I were his groom. He passed Bluebell’s leading rein to me as well, so that I was holding the string of ponies and the two big horses.

‘Thank you, Meridon,’ he said graciously. ‘The lad will show you where they go,’ and then he walked past me through the doorway to the house. Dandy, still on the step of the wagon, exchanged one long look with me.

‘Phew,’ she puffed out, and jumped down from the wagon to take the string of little ponies off me. ‘Welcome to the servants’ quarters, Merry!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No wonder Robert Gower didn’t want Jack fancying either one of us. He must think he’s half-way to being gentry!’

An odd sly look crossed Dandy’s face, but she had her head down to the halter and was leading the ponies away so I could not see her properly. ‘Aye,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Our pretty Jack must be quite a catch for the young ladies of Warminster!’

Before I could answer her a lad came through the door to the stable yard. He was dressed well enough but cheaply in good breeches and a rough shirt and a fustian waistcoat. He took Bluebell’s reins from me and patted her neck in greeting.

‘I’m William,’ he said by way of introduction.

‘I’m Meridon Cox,’ I replied. ‘And this is my sister Dandy.’

His look went carefully over me, noting the slim-cut boy’s riding breeches and the cut-down shirt; my tumble of copper curls and my wiry strength; and then widened when he saw Dandy, her red skirt casually hitched up to show her ankles, her green shawl setting off her mass of loosely plaited black hair.

‘Do you work for Robert Gower?’ he asked incredulously.

‘I do the horses and Dandy does the gate,’ I said.

‘And are you the lasses that are going up on that swing?’ he demanded of me.

My stomach churned at the thought of it. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘My sister will, but I work with the horses. I just have to try it a little. I’m to be the bareback rider.’

‘He’s had the barn cleaned out, and the trapeze man came yesterday and put the ropes and the blocks and the pulleys up in it,’ William said in a rush. ‘Ever so high. And they’ve stretched a net like a fisherman’s net underneath, to catch you if you fall. We tested it too with a couple of bales of hay to see if it’s strong enough.

‘The barn’s filled with wood shavings from the wood mill – sacks and sacks of them. So when you’re done with practising on the rigging, he can use the barn for training the horses when the weather’s too bad to be outside.’

I nodded. Robert had meant it when he promised us a hard winter of work. ‘And where do we sleep?’ I asked. ‘Where do we take our meals?’

‘He’s had the rooms above the stables done up for you,’ William said. ‘We’ve put two beds of straw in for you, and your own chest for your things. And your own ewer and basin. There’s even a fireplace and we had the sweep in to clear it out for you. You’ll eat at the kitchen table with Mrs Greaves and me.’

He showed us the way into the stables. Each door had a horse’s name on it. William glanced at me and saw I was puzzling over the words, not knowing where I should take Snow.

‘Can’t you read?’ he asked surprised. And taking the horse from me he led Snow into the best stall, furthest away from the door and from the draughts. Bluebell went in next door; and then the ponies, two to a loose box. I looked over the doors to see they all had hay and water.

‘When they’re cooled down they’re to go out, all except Snow,’ William said. ‘Through that gateway, down the little path through the garden and there’s a field at the bottom. You’ll take them down.’

‘What do you do?’ I demanded, nettled at this allocation of work. ‘Don’t you look after them?’

William crinkled his brown eyes at me through his matted fringe.

‘I does whatever I’m told,’ he said, as if it were some private joke. ‘Robert Gower took me out of the poorhouse. If he tells me to be a groom, I’m a groom. I was that last winter, and the one before that. But now that’s your job and I do the heavy work in the house and anything else he asks me. Whatever he tells me to do, I does it. And as long as I please him, I sleep sound in a bed and I eat well. I ain’t never going back into the poorhouse again.’

Dandy shot a look at me which spoke volumes. ‘How much does he pay you?’ she demanded.

William leaned against the stable door and scratched his head. ‘He don’t pay me,’ he said. ‘I gets my keep, same as Mrs Greaves and Jack.’

‘Mrs Greaves gets no money?’ I demanded, the picture of the smart respectable woman clear in my mind.

‘He bought her out of the workhouse too,’ William said. ‘He gives her the housekeeping and she feeds well out of that. He gives her some money every quarter for her laundry bill and new aprons. But he doesn’t pay her. What would she want money for?’

‘For herself,’ I said grimly. ‘So that if she wanted to leave she could.’

William gave a slow chuckle. ‘She wouldn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘No more than I would. Where would she go? There’s only the workhouse, for there are no jobs going in the town, and no one would take a servant who had left without a character. There’s plenty as tidy and neat as her in the workhouse – why should anyone take a woman off the street? Why should anyone pay wages when the workhouse is full of paupers who would work for free with their keep?’ William paused and looked at Dandy and me. ‘Does he pay you?’ he asked.

I was about to say, ‘Yes,’ but then I paused. He did indeed pay me, a penny a day. But out of that princely sum I had repaid him for my shirt and my breeches, and I wanted to buy a jacket for the winter too. I had no savings from my wages. He had paid out the pennies and when I had saved them into shillings, I had paid them back. I looked at Dandy; he paid her the odd penny for minding the gate and she still picked the occasional pocket. ‘Do you have any money saved, Dandy?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I had to repay Robert for the material for my riding habit. I still owe him a couple of shillings.’

‘We’re all treated the same then,’ William said with doltish satisfaction. ‘But you have a real pretty room of your own up the ladder.’

He pointed to a rough wooden staircase without a handrail which went up the side of the stable wall. I checked that all the horses were safely bolted in, and then Dandy and I clattered up the twelve steps to the trapdoor at the top. It lifted up and we were in the first room we had ever owned in our lives.

It was a bare clean space with two mattresses of straw with blankets in each corner, a great chest under the window, a fire of sticks laid in the little black grate, and two little windows looking out over the stable yard. The walls were finished in the rough creamy-coloured mud of the region, and the sloping ceiling which came down to the top of the windows was the underside of the thatched roof – a mesh of sticks and straw.

‘How lovely!’ Dandy said with delight. ‘A proper room of our own.’

She went at once to the broken bit of mirror which was nailed to one of the beams running crosswise across the room and smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘A looking glass of my own,’ she breathed, promising herself hours of delight. Then she dropped to her knees and examined the ewer and bowl standing in lonely state on the chest. ‘Real pretty,’ she said with approval.

I ducked my head to look out of the window. I could see over the stable yard and across the lane to the yard and cottage on the far side. Beyond them was a glimpse of green fields and the glitter of light on a broad river.

William’s brown head appeared comically though the trapdoor. ‘Come for your tea,’ he invited. ‘It’s ready in the kitchen. You can bring your things up later.’

Dandy rounded on him with all the pride of a property dweller. ‘Don’t you know to knock when you come to a lady’s bedroom!’ she exclaimed, irritated.

William’s round face lost its smile and his face coloured brick red with embarrassment. ‘Beg pardon,’ he mumbled uncomfortably, and then ducked down out of sight. ‘But tea is ready,’ he called stubbornly.

‘We’ll come,’ I said and taking Dandy firmly by the arm I got her away from the mirror and the ewer and would not even let her stop to examine the great chest for the clothes we had not got.

Our first two days in Warminster were easy. All I had to do was to care for the horses, to groom them and water them, and discover the boredom of cleaning out the same stable over and over again. Travelling with horses I had never had to wash down cobblestones in my life, and I did not enjoy learning from William.

Dandy was equally surly when Mrs Greaves called her into the kitchen and offered her a plain grey skirt and a white pinny. She clutched to her red skirt and green shawl and refused to be parted from them.

‘Master’s orders,’ Mrs Greaves said briefly. She stole Dandy’s finery while she was sulkily changing, and took them away to be washed but then did not return them. Dandy collared Robert as he was inspecting the stable the same afternoon.

‘I warned you,’ he said genially. ‘I told you there’d be no whoring around this village. They’re God-fearing people, and my neighbours. You’ll cause all the stir you want at church tomorrow morning without being as bright as a Romany whore.’

‘I’ll not go to church!’ Dandy said, genuinely shocked. ‘I ain’t never been!’

Robert glanced at me. ‘You neither, Meridon?’ he asked. I shook my head.

‘Not been christened?’ he asked in as much horror as if he had been anything but godless himself when we were on the road.

‘Oh aye,’ Dandy said with reasonable pride. ‘Lots of times. Every time the preacher came round we was christened. For the penny they gives you. But we never go to church.’

Robert nodded. ‘Well you’ll go now,’ he said. ‘All my household do.’ He looked at me under his bushy blond eyebrows. ‘Mrs Greaves has a gown for you too, Meridon. You’ll have to wear it for going in the village.’

I stared back, measuring the possibility of defiance. ‘Don’t try it my girl,’ he advised me. His voice was gentle but there was steel behind it. ‘Don’t dream of it. I’m as much the master here as I am when we’re in the ring. We play a part there, and we play a part here. In this village you are respectable young women. You have to wear a skirt.’

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘You always did wear a dress, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘That first day I saw you, you were training the horse in some ragged skirt, weren’t you? And you rode astride in a skirt as well, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘But I like boy’s breeches better. They’re easier to work in.’

‘You can wear them for work,’ he said. ‘But not outside the stable yard.’

I nodded. Dandy waited till his back was turned and then she picked up her dull long grey skirt and swept him a curtsey. ‘Mountebank squire,’ she said; but not so loud as he could hear.

I said nothing about the dress destined for me. But that night, at supper in the kitchen, Mrs Greaves pushed a petticoat, chemise, grey dress and pinny across the wide scrubbed table. There was even a plain white cap folded stiffly on top of the pile of clothes.

‘For church tomorrow,’ she said.

I raised my green eyes to her pale blue ones. ‘What if I don’t want to go?’ I asked.

Her face was like a pat of butter smoothed blank by fear and suffering. ‘Better had,’ she said.

I picked them up without a word.

They were strange to put on next morning. Dandy helped me with them, and spent hours herself, plaiting and replaiting her hair until it was to her satisfaction in a glossy coronet with the little white cap perched on top as far back as she dared. In absolute contrast I had pulled my cap down low, and stuffed as much of my copper mop inside as I possibly could. I regretted now my impatient hacking of my hair with the big scissors we used to trim the horses’ tails. If it had been longer I could have tied it back. Cut ragged, it was a riot of curls which continually sprang out.

I straightened the cap in front of the mirror. Dandy was retying her pinny ribbon and not watching me. I stared at myself in the glass. It was a much clearer reflection than the water trough beneath a pump, I had never seen myself so well before. I saw my eyes, their shifting hazel-green colour, the set of them slanty. My pale clear skin and the fading speckle of summertime freckles. The riotous thick curly auburn hair, and the mouth which smiled, as if at some inner secret, even though my eyes were cold. Even though I had little to smile for.

‘You could be pretty,’ Dandy said. Her round pink face appeared beside mine. ‘You could be really pretty,’ she said encouragingly, ‘if you weren’t so odd-looking. If you smiled at the boys a bit.’

I stepped back from the little bit of mirror.

‘They’ve got nothing I want,’ I said. ‘Nothing to smile for.’

Dandy licked her fingers to make them damp and twirled her fringe and the ringlets at the side of her face.

‘What do you want then?’ she said idly. ‘What d’you want that a boy can’t give you?’

‘I want Wide,’ I said instantly.

She turned and stared at me. ‘You’re going to have a silk shirt and breeches, aye and a riding habit, and you still dream of that?’ she asked in amazement. ‘We’ve got away from Da, and we can earn a penny a day, and we eat so well, and we can wear clothes as fine as Quality and everyone looks at us. Everyone! Every girl wishes she could wear velvets like me! And you still think of that old stuff?’

‘’Tisn’t old stuff!’ I said, passionate. ‘’Tisn’t old stuff. It’s a secret. You were glad enough to hear about it when there was just you and me against Da and Zima. I don’t break faith just because I’ve got a place in service.’

‘Service!’ Dandy spat. ‘Don’t call this service. I dress as fine as Quality in my costume!’

‘It’s costume,’ I said angrily. ‘Only a silly Rom slut like you would think it was as fine as Quality, Dandy. You look at real ladies, they don’t wear gilt and dyed feathers like you. The real ones dress in fine silks, cloth so good it stands stiff on its own. They don’t wear ten gilt bangles, they wear one bracelet of real gold. Their clothes ain’t dirty. They keep their voices quiet. They’re nothing like us, nothing like us at all.’

Dandy sprang at me, quicker than I could fend her off. Her two hands were stretched into claws and she went straight for my eyes, and raked a scratch down my cheek. I was stronger than her, but she had the advantage of being heavier – and she was as angry as a scalded cat.

‘I am as good as Quality,’ she said, and pulled at my cap. It was pinned to my hair and the sharp pain as some hair came out made me shriek in pain and blindly strike back at her. I had made a fist, as instinctive as her scratching hands, and I caught her on the jaw with a satisfying thud and she reeled backwards.

‘Meridon, you cow!’ she bawled at me and came for me at a half run and bowled me back on to my straw mattress and sat, with her heavier weight, while I wriggled and tossed beneath her.

Then I lay still. ‘Oh, what’s the use?’ I said wearily. She released me and stood up and went at once to the mirror to see if I had bruised her flower-white skin. I sat up and put a hand to my cheek. It stung. She had drawn blood. ‘We’ve always seen different,’ I said sadly, looking at her across the little room. ‘You thought you might marry Quality from that dirty little wagon with Da and Zima. Now you think you’re as good as Quality because you’re a caller for a travelling show. You might be right, Dandy, it’s just never seemed that wonderful to me.’

She looked at me over her shoulder, her pink mouth a perfect rosebud of discontent. ‘I shall have great opportunities,’ she said stubbornly, stumbling over one of Robert’s words. ‘I shall take my pick when I am ready. When I am Mademoiselle Dandy on the flying trapeze I will have more than enough offers. Jack himself will come to my beck then.’

I put my hand to my head and brought it down wet with blood. I unpinned my cap hoping it was still clean, but it was marked. I would have complained, but what Dandy said made me hold my peace.

‘I thought you’d given up on Jack,’ I said cautiously. ‘You know what his da plans for him.’

Dandy primped her fringe again. ‘I know you thought that,’ she said smugly. ‘And so does his da. And so probably does he. But now I’ve seen what he’s worth, I think I’ll have him.’

‘Have to catch him first,’ I said. I was deliberately guarding myself against the panic which was rising in me. Dandy was wilfully blind to the tyrannical power of Robert Gower. If she thought she could trick his son into marriage, and herself into the lady’s chair in the parlour which we had not been even allowed to enter, then she was mad with her vanity. She could tempt Jack – I was sure of it. But she would not be able to trick Robert Gower. I thought of the wife he had left behind him, crying in the road behind a vanishing cart, and I felt that prickle of fear down my spine.

‘Leave it be, Dandy,’ I begged her. ‘There’ll be many chances for you. Jack Gower is only the first of them.’

She smiled at her reflection, watching the dimples in her cheeks.

‘I know,’ she said smugly. Then she turned to look at me, and at once her expression changed. ‘Oh Merry! Little Merry! I didn’t mean to hurt you so!’ She made a little rush for the ewer and wetted the edge of my blanket and dabbed with the moist wool at my head and my cheek, making little apologetic noises of distress. ‘I’m a cow,’ she said remorsefully. ‘I’m sorry, Merry.’

‘S’all right,’ I said. I bore her ministrations patiently, but to be patted and stroked set my teeth on edge. ‘What’s that noise?’

‘It’s Robert in the yard,’ Dandy said and flew for the trapdoor down to the ladder. ‘He’s ready for church and Jack and Mrs Greaves and even William with him. Come on, Merry, he’s waiting.’

She clattered down the stairs into the yard and I swung open the little window. I had to stoop to lean out.

‘I’m not coming,’ I called down.

Robert stared up at me. ‘Why’s that?’ he asked. His voice was hard. His Warminster, landlord voice.

He squinted against the low winter sun.

‘You two been having a cat-fight?’ he asked Dandy, turning sharply on her.

She smiled at him, inviting him to share the jest. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we’re all friends now.’

Without a change of expression, Robert struck her hard across the face, a blow that sent her reeling back. Mrs Greaves put out a hand to steady her on her feet, her face impassive.

‘Your faces – aye and your hands and your legs and your arms – are your fortunes, my girls,’ Robert said evenly, without raising his voice. ‘If you two fight you must do it without leaving a mark on each other. If I wanted to do a show tomorrow I could not use Merry in the ring. If you get a black bruise on your chin you’re no good for calling nor on the gate for a week. If you two can’t put my business first I can find girls who can. Quarrelsome sluts are two a penny. I can get them out of the workhouse any day.’

‘You can’t get bareback riders,’ Dandy said, her voice low.

Robert rounded on her. ‘Aye, so I’d keep your sister,’ he said meanly. ‘It’s you I don’t need. It’s you I never needed. You’re here on her ticket. So go back up and wipe her face and get her down here. You two little heathens are going to church, and mind Mrs Greaves and don’t shame me.’

He turned and strode out of the yard with Jack. He didn’t even look to see if we followed. Mrs Greaves waited till I tumbled down the stable stairs pulling on my cap and patting my cheek with the back of my hand before leading the way out of the yard. Dandy and I exchanged one subdued glance and followed her, side by side. William fell in behind us. I felt no malice towards Dandy for the fight. I felt no anger towards Robert for the blow he had fetched her. Dandy and I had been reared in a hard school, we were both used to knocks – far heavier and less deserved than that. What I did not like was Robert’s readiness to throw us off. I scowled at that as we turned out of the gate and walked to our right down the lane towards the village church.

There was a fair crowd beside the church gate and I was glad then that I had not kept my breeches. All the way up the path to the church door heads were turned and fingers pointed us out as the show girls. I saw why Robert had been so insistent that we behave like Quaker servant girls and dress like them too.

He was establishing his gentility inch by inch in his censorious little village. He was buying his way in with his charities, he was wringing respect out of them with his wealth. He dared not risk a whisper of notoriety about his household. Show girls we might be, but no one could ever accuse any of Robert Gower’s people of lowering the tone.

Dandy glanced around as we walked and even risked a tiny sideways smile at a group of lads waiting by the church door. But Robert Gower looked back and she quickly switched her gaze to her new boots and was forced to walk past them without even a swing of the hips.

I kept my eyes down. I did not need a glance of admiration from any man, least of all a callow youth. Besides, I had something on my mind. I did not like the Warminster Robert Gower as I had liked the man on the steps of the wagon. He was too clearly a hard man with a goal in sight and nothing, least of all two little gypsy girls, would turn him from it. He had felt that he did not belong in the parish workhouse. He had felt that he did not belong in a dirty cottage with a failed cartering business of his own. His first horse had been a starting point. The wagon and the Warminster house were later steps on the road to gentility. He wanted to be a master of his trade – even though his trade was a travelling show. He had felt, as I did, that his life should be wider, grander. And he had made – as I was starting to hope that I might make – that great step from poverty to affluence.

But he paid for it. In all the restrictions which this narrowminded village placed on him. So here his voice was harder, he had struck Dandy, and he had told us both that he was ready to throw us off.

I, too, wanted to step further. I understood his determination because I shared it. I wanted to take the two of us away. I wanted to step right away from the life of gilt and sweat. I wanted to sit in a pink south-facing parlour and take tea from a clean cup. I wanted to be Quality. I wanted Wide.

I watched him and Mrs Greaves closely and I kneeled when they kneeled and I stood when they stood. I turned the page of the prayer book when they did, though I could not read the words. I mouthed the prayers and I opened my mouth and bawled ‘la la la’ for the hymns. I followed them in every detail of behaviour so that Robert Gower could have no cause for complaint. For until I could get us safely away, Robert Gower was our raft on the sea of poverty. I would cling to him as if I adored him, until it was safe to leave him, until I had somewhere to take Dandy. Until I could see my way clear to a home for the two of us.

When we were bidden to pray I sank to my knees in the pew like some ranting Methody and buried my face in my calloused hands. While the preacher spoke of sin and contrition I had only one prayer, a passionate plea to a God I did not even believe in.

‘Get me Wide,’ I said. I whispered it over and over. ‘Get me and Dandy safe to Wide.’