How the Heather Looks Page 3

  We had known that we were a trifle mad to take Lucy on a literary tour of England, but some people had even argued against our taking Ian. Why not wait until he was older? Until he had read more? Until he had developed a sense of historical perspective? Now we were vindicated. Ian stood in that ancient empty square and gazed upward, his face a study in delight. Above him stood the king – proud, imperious, though a little battered. Perhaps his fossil heart was momentarily quickened by the homage paid by a small American boy in the square below. An old magic was at work. Given the chance, Ian would have laid heart and sword at Henry’s feet, willing to follow him anywhere.

  We drove across the bridge that leads out of the town, and now the road led between high, wooded hills and around oxbow bends. We seemed to be the only car on the road, and in the late afternoon shadows it was easy to imagine ambushes and raiding parties, the glint of steel and clash of armor. We came to a tiny deserted village of stone cottages, the roofs caved in and covered with vines. An old man with a staff in his hand and a dog at his heels stood by the side of the road and watched our car go by. He looked like a figure out of Wordsworth. In a little while the valley widened, we passed green fields and comfortable farmhouses, then suddenly our hearts leaped. Ahead of us the fretted ruins of Tintern Abbey seemed to float toward us in the translucent air.

  I felt then that I had come home. My grandfather’s house was but five miles from Tintern. My mother had filled my childhood with tales of all the country around and I, in turn, had passed them on to Ian. Alas! We had come too late. It was just six o’clock and a man was clanging the gate shut and turning a key in the black iron lock when we turned into the parking lot.

  We decided to drive on to Chepstow and spend the night there in an old inn where my family had spent a week when I was a little girl. I painted a glowing picture of it to John and Ian. There was a high-walled garden where my sisters and I had played shuttlecock; there were blue and white tiles surrounding a window or fireplace (I could not remember which), and I could still remember an upstairs drawing room with a glass-fronted bookcase which contained the best ghost story I had ever encountered. But when we came to it I would not have recognized the old inn except for a sign above the door. Where were the old stone stairs that had gone up one side of it? A huge, red brick cinema had been built so close that there was not room for the outside stair now, hardly room to slip a knife blade between the buildings. Where was the quaint walled garden? Gone, gone under blacktop. Reluctantly we went inside. Lucy, tired of being cramped in the car all day, broke loose from my grasp and ran down the corridor. I managed to waylay her on the first landing of the staircase. As I turned to come down again I found myself gazing straight into a blue and white tiled alcove. Lucy was as enchanted as I. Here were Mr. and Mrs. Noah; here were Adam and Eve. The tiles were extremely old – seventeenth century, perhaps – but their colors, their freshness, their naïveté seemed like the morning of the world. No wonder I had remembered them, however vaguely, over all the years. This was the place! We signed the register.

  That night, after I had tucked Lucy in bed, I tried to find the drawing room and the book containing the ghost story so that I could read it to Ian. But the old drawing-room fireplace had been replaced by a sterile “electric fire,” and there was not a book to be seen. The room was empty, most of the guests evidently preferring the bar downstairs or the television in the lounge. The marvelous ghost story (which I had never finished) was lost forever. I returned to our rooms on the fourth floor. The Saturday night cinema, just the other side of the wall, was in full blast. There was no use trying to sleep. John and I spent the time until midnight packing and repacking our belongings, trying to pick out what we would need for our camping trip in Cornwall, relegating the remainder to two suitcases we planned to leave in Chepstow. Sometime after midnight we crept into bed and fell into troubled sleep.

  Next morning our car crept down the steep, cobbled streets, then across the quiet river. Looking back, we saw the walls and turrets of Chepstow Castle reflected in the Wye. To Ian, the sight was almost unbearably frustrating. Here was another castle he was not allowed to visit. What was the good of coming to England at all, he asked dramatically, if we were going to drive by every interesting thing we saw? In vain we pointed out to him that we had promised to reach St. Agnes, Cornwall, by Monday, in order to claim our reservation, and this was Sunday. We had made far too many stops, and now we were behind schedule. In the resulting argument I somehow failed to keep my eye on our trusty Bartholomew’s Road Atlas of Great Britain, and we missed the turn to the ferry that was to give us a shortcut across the Severn.

  “We can turn around at the first wide place on the road,” I said reassuringly, but miles went by with no wide place appearing. “Oh, well!” said John at last. “We might as well drive on to Gloucester and double back from there.” Lucy sat up suddenly and took her thumb out of her mouth. “Am I sick?” she asked. Hastily I felt her forehead. “No,” I said, “you aren’t sick.” I knew enough to be firm. But Lucy was not to be put off. “I don’t want to go to the doctor.” I tried to soothe her. “We aren’t going to the doctor. For Heaven’s sake! Whatever gave you that idea?” Lucy stopped in mid-howl. “Doctor Foster,” she said. “Daddy said ‘Doctor Foster.’” For a moment we were all puzzled, then we began to laugh. It had taken Lucy to remind us that Gloucester was not just a dot on the map, but a place fabled in song and story:

  Doctor Foster went to Gloucester

  In a shower of rain.

  He stepped in a puddle right up to his middle

  And never went there again.

  Then, of course, Ian remembered Beatrix Potter’s The Tailor of Gloucester. Craftily he pointed out that since we had not stopped at the castle we must find the place where the Tailor had lived. John hesitated. “We’ll see when we get there,” he said, but when we crossed the bridge and came to the big intersection he did not take the road to Bristol. Instead, he drove straight into the heart of the old city. Off to our left we could see the lovely tower of the cathedral. The tailor had lived near the cathedral, we remembered, but although we tried several narrow Sabbath-emptied streets, our little car seemed to go in circles, never quite finding a way to penetrate the maze. Then we saw a sign marked Westgate Street, a name familiar from the book. We turned down the narrow way where the old houses seemed to lean over and touch foreheads above us. The street ended in a tiny square or court surrounding an ancient cross. A stone-arched gateway yawned across the way and through it we could glimpse grass and flowers. Miss Potter tells us that although the Tailor’s shop was in Westgate, “… he lived quite nearby in College Court, next the doorway to College Green. And although it was not a big house, the tailor was so poor he only rented the kitchen…. He lived alone with his cat; it was called Simpkin.”

  Would John let us stop and explore? I would not blame him if he decided not to. It seemed too much to ask, especially after my failure to watch the map. We crept around the square in our tiny car to a halt in front of the old archway. “Look! There’s Simpkin!” he shouted, his voice full of sudden wonder and delight. He was as surprised as we at his own enthusiasm. And sure enough, there in the arch was a haughty tortoise-shell cat shaking rain water from his paws in such a disgusted and Simpkin-like manner that there could be no doubt.

  John parked the car and opened the doors so we could stumble out and stretch our legs. Rain had been falling, but now it had stopped and watery sunlight began to shine through. Before our delighted eyes we saw the College Green and the old cathedral made bright in blinding sunshine. The children ran ahead of us and out of the archway, eager to revel in sun and grass and flowers. John and I strolled in their wake, marveling at houses already old “in the time of swords and periwigs….” The houses were very old, but each one was tended with loving care. Every garden was mowed and clipped and crowded with flowers, every diamond pane sparkled in the sunlight. Morning service was being conducted in the cathedral. We could hear the voices of the
choir and, peeking through the great doors, we had an impression of vast depths, flickering candles, and shards of sunlight filtered through stained glass.

  We started back toward the gate and noticed Simpkin stretched full length upon a wall, soaking up warmth and sunlight. He lay with one eye closed, the other a mere green slit, but we were well aware that he was watching us. The children came running back along the paths and we seized the opportunity to herd them through the archway and into the car again. Simpkin, pretending haughty disdain, had leaped down from his wall and followed us out to the car. Ian leaned out to wave him an especially fond farewell.

  It was in 1902, soon after the publication of Peter Rabbit, that Beatrix Potter visited Gloucester and heard the story of an old tailor who had left a coat unfinished, and the next day discovered it completed except for one buttonhole. Whoever (or whatever) had done the work, had pinned a note: “No more twist.” There was something in this little mystery that intrigued Miss Potter. She sketched the house in College Court where the old tailor was said to have lived, and the old buildings in Westgate Street where he had had his shop. Her passion for old furniture and architectural detail set her to working on drawings of the interiors of the old cottages too. She wrote down the story in an ordinary copy book and sent it off to her former governess’s little girl, Freda Moore, sister to the little boy for whom she had written Peter Rabbit. The letter that went with it appears as the dedication in the book:

  My Dear Freda:

  Because you are fond of fairytales, and been ill, I have made you a story all for yourself – a new one that nobody has read before.

  And the queerest thing about it is – that I heard it in Gloucestershire, and that it is true – at least about the tailor, the waistcoat and the

  “No more twist.”

  Miss Potter was too shy (and too proud) to badger her publishers with another book so soon after the publication of Peter Rabbit. She herself paid for a private edition and eventually a copy made its way into the hands of Norman Warne. He liked the book but was hesitant to print it without abridgment. Miss Potter set about to write and rewrite, to polish her prose and to place each word and phrase in proper and precise relationship. Then she was ready to set the jewels. The scenes of Gloucester she had done the year before, but to make the exquisite studies of eighteenth-century clothes and embroidery she went to South Kensington Museum where she must have spent hours transposing the richness and texture of the needleman’s art to paint and paper. The resultant illustrations have almost the effect of trompe-l’oeil. I have seen a small child reach out and wonderingly touch his finger to the page.

  The stitches of those buttonholes were so neat – so neat – I wonder how they could be stitched by an old man in spectacles, with crooked old fingers and a tailor’s thimble.

  The stitches of those buttonholes were so small – so small – they looked as if they had been made by little mice!

  We drove back to the main intersection in Gloucester and took the road to Bristol. It was late afternoon when we threaded our way through Bristol’s unmarked streets. We were thankful to be tackling it on a quiet Sunday. On the map the city looks too far inland to be much of a port, but its sheltered access to the sea makes it a major one. We crossed the Avon where ocean-going vessels rode the tide, and remembered that it was from here that the Hispaniola sailed, and where Jim Hawkins first met Long John Silver. We looked in vain for Master Silver’s “Spy-glass,” a little tavern with a large brass telescope for a sign. We all agreed that it sounded an ideal place to stop for a meal: cheerful and clean, with new red curtains at the windows and a freshly swept floor. John said he would be perfectly willing to share a table with Black Dog and have a one-legged pirate do the cooking for him. In fact, he was so hungry he would be amenable to anyone’s doing the cooking!

  John peered hopefully into each window as we passed, but every wayside tea place seemed to be closed. Just before coming to Bridgewater we began to see those strange and (to us) un-British notices: No Gypsies and Gypsies Not Served Here. We had seen signs like these before, of course, directed against another and larger minority in the United States. Our liberal reflexes were in perfect working order; we felt our hackles rising, even as at home. But it was disconcerting, now that we were faced with it, how little we knew about gypsies or “the gypsy problem.” It was not until we had returned to the United States and I had spent some hours poking about in the files of the British Information Services in Rockefeller Center that we were able to fill out our scanty store of knowledge.

  We found out later that there are approximately a hundred thousand “travelers” who roam the English roads and countryside, although only one third of them are true Romany. There is probably not an English gypsy today who can speak the pure language that is said to have come from India centuries ago, but the Anglo-Romany language is still unique in itself. With few exceptions, it would seem foolish to claim respectability – by ordinary Anglo-Saxon middle-class standards – for the average gypsy. Although he lives by a strict social code of his own, he does not necessarily apply this code to the “gorgio.” It is perfectly permissible, for instance, to lie, cheat, beg, steal, trespass, and poach as long as the victim is non-gypsy. Gypsies must pose a ticklish problem for local authorities, especially since many of them steadfastly refuse to send their children to school for fear of separating them from their Romany heritage. In recent years, the encroachments of suburbia and the building of council houses on once-free common lands have steadily cut into their camping sites and forced the issue of tolerance on the local level. Despite the efforts of the government, when gypsy children do go to school, they are more often than not put into segregated classrooms.

  But driving along the Bridgewater Road that Sunday afternoon, we could only rely on our memories to supply us with gypsy lore. John remembered stray bits from George Borrow’s Romany Rye and The Little Minister and Ian asked us not to forget the gypsy whose shoe figured so prominently in the The Borrowers Afield. And then there was the Impractical Chimney Sweep: he was only half-gypsy, but in the end he married a gypsy girl. But what Ian remembered best of all was the picture in Arthur Rackham’s Book of English Ballads. The next moment we were all trying to sing as much as we could remember of “The Gypsy Laddy”:

  Last night you slept on a goose-feather bed

  With the sheet turned down so bravely, O.

  Tonight you will sleep in the cold, open field

  Along with the Raggle, Taggle Gypsies, O.

  We felt the song especially apropos since we ourselves were bound for Cornwall to camp out on the moors. We had arranged to rent a caravan and rather fancied ourselves as wayfarers, albeit somewhat in the amateurish way of Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows. John warned us, however, that it would not be tonight that we would be sleeping in the “cold, open field.” We were far behind schedule and would have to stop soon to search for more civilized lodgings. John and I both were busily peering for Bed and Breakfast signs when Ian suddenly called out, “Hey, look! Gypsies!” We looked to where he was pointing and, sure enough, saw a whole encampment on the other side of the road.

  John stopped the car, evidently resigned to missing deadlines, and we made our way across the road to peer through a wire fence. Some of the “caravans” were what we would call modern trailers, but down at the brook, in one corner of the field, were several suitably romantic types, their shafts resting on the grass, smoke curling from their chimneys.

  Nowadays, having done a little reading and research, our family rather prides itself as expert on the subject and we would like to think that we can just cast a glance over a gypsy wagon and be able to tell you immediately where it came from, its relative cost, and who built it – rather like old sailors being able to tell a ship’s identity by the cut of her jib. But at the time when all this book-learning would have served and we could have put it to the test, we did not know the difference between a Reading wagon (the largest) and a Fen (the smallest, and now virtually
extinct). Indeed, we were so ignorant that we did not know that the term “caravan” is never used by a true gypsy. He calls his house-on-wheels a “living wagon.” The misnomer seems to have been first applied by Dickens when describing Mrs. Jellicoe’s van in The Old Curiosity Shop.

  The wagon that now caught our eye was painted green and yellow, its barrel-shaped body flaring out to about six and a half feet at its widest point. It was rather small, so perhaps it was a Leeds wagon, built by Bill Wright & Sons, although I seem to remember that the high painted wheels were outside the body. An old woman, wrinkled and nut brown, sat on the steps at the opening and stared at us. A collection of children pressed close to her, peering out at us with bright, dark eyes through tangled hair. (Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, in his book British Gypsies, writes that Romany children are the happiest and most spoiled in the world.) The children tumbled and struggled like so many puppies, striving for a seat closer to the grandmother or the better to see the gorgios, but the old woman sat unmoving and stared straight at – or through – us with eyes as bright as any of the children’s. An old black dog leaped down from the interior and came running toward the fence, sniffed once or twice at us, and returned to the children. He did not bark, but neither did he wag his tail.

  In the end it was we who were discomfited. We could not simply stand there and stare as though we were watching animals in the zoo, although the old grandam seemed to find us infinitely amusing. We were told later that we should have offered money and perhaps she would have let us take a picture, but this seemed a poor way to begin a friendship.