Lynda La Plante - The Legacy

Jesse shrugged and put his feet up on the shelf, Freedom would be all right, he murmured. Mr Beshaley pursed his lips, what a wasted night it had been, all this way and for what, to be almost mobbed. He had never even got a chance to talk with Sir Charles Wheeler — maybe to get him interested in one of his other boxers.

Rawnie, with her skirts hitched up over her bare knees, smoked a hand-rolled cigarette clenched between her teeth. Perched up on the boards she held the reins loosely between her fingers, clucking for the horses to move on, then flicked a whip across their backs. She began to sing, low, husky, as if she had not a care in the world.

Mande went to poor theory, all around the stiggur sty,

Mush off to Mande, I takes off my chuvvel,

I dels him in the per,

So ope me duvvel dancin Mande cours well.

Inside Rawnie’s caravan Jesse was held by her husky voice, he smiled at Beshaley, and lowered his thick, black eyelashes.

‘Freedom always was a loser, tonight he proved it.’ He joined in singing with Rawnie, their voices as soft as each other’s. Beshaley shivered, they seemed so close, these two, and he felt like an intruder. He couldn’t wait to get to Swansea. The pair of them unnerved him.

Hugh climbed the stairs, heavy-hearted. He could see the gaslight beneath Evelyne’s door. Before he reached the door she opened it and stood, hands on hips. ‘Well, what have you heard?’

Hugh shifted his weight and mumbled that they’d taken the gypsy to Cardiff, and the word was he’d be hanged.

‘What if I was to tell you he didn’t do the killings, none of them, it wasn’t him?’

Hugh said that was for the courts to decide. Evan Evans was in the pub telling everyone that the gypsy had said not one word, which in Evans’ eyes proved that he was guilty.

‘If what you said about Willie is true, then so help me God I’m for the gel, but that’s no reason to slit a man’s throat — more than one.’

Evelyne snapped that more than one boy had raped Rawnie, and turned to go back into her bedroom. Hugh caught her arm. ‘Tell me how you know so much, miss? Why you had the papers, why you showed your fist to your father in front of the whole village?’

Evelyne pulled her arm free and pushed past him, back into her bedroom snapping that he’d no need to worry, she’d not been touched by any of them.

‘Where you goin’? Evie?’

She kicked the door to behind her, shouting that she was going to Cardiff. Hugh kicked the door back open again, his temper rising. ‘Like hell you are, you stay out of this, you’ve done enough as it is.’

Evelyne was pulling clothes out of a drawer and throwing them on her bed. ‘It’s you who’s done it, Da, you, you’re power-mad since you got into that union. They hang him and they’ll hang an innocent man.’

As fast as Evelyne took out her clothes, Hugh stuffed them back in the drawers, his temper mounting, and he shouted that she was not to leave the house.

‘I was with him, Da, the night Willie was killed, I was with him, and I’m going to say so, he couldn’t have done it.’

Hugh pulled her roughly to him, his hand raised to strike her, and she stared at him, stony-faced. ‘Go on, hit me if it’ll make you feel better, I was with him but not in the way you think. God help me, I went up there to warn him.’

Hugh slumped down on to the bed. He couldn’t understand her. He shook his head and rumpled his hair. She still opened and closed the drawers, taking out what she needed. She brought a cardboard box out from under the bed.

‘Don’t get involved, gel, trust me, leave it be:. unless … does this lad take your fancy, is that it?’

Evelyne threw up her hands in despair. ‘No, I just know he didn’t do it, and I can’t live with myself knowing what I know … Oh, Da, I should have told you before, everything, but I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t.’

He patted the bed beside him and she sat close to him, resting her head on his shoulder. Slowly, piece by piece, she told him about the night in the boxing tent in Cardiff. The terrible humiliation she had suffered, the money she had taken from David, money she’d been so ashamed of, and at last her bitterness came to the surface. She made no sound, but he knew she was crying and he cradled her in his arms.

‘Being poor, Evie, is nothing to be. ashamed of, one does things in a life that’re much worse.’

She looked up into his sad face and asked if he was thinking of little Davey, and he nodded his head. He still held his big arm around her shoulders, but he stared vacantly ahead. After a moment he rose and walked to the window, drawing back the curtains to look out into the dark night.

‘I was quite a lad, you know, when I was a youngster. Easter fair was always a night out for the lads. She was telling fortunes in a small booth — not like they have now, it was decorated with painted canvas, sort of draped — and you paid a ha’penny for a palm reading. By God, Evie, she was a beauty, not like your ma, different, exciting to young bloods, and we was all after her. See, we couldn’t lay a finger on the local gels, not without their mothers coming around with their rolling pins … Anyways, I set out to capture the little dark-eyed wench, all the while cocksure of myself, telling the lads I’d have her. She said I was to come back at midnight, she’d leave the caravan door ajar. Well, I had my night with her, and the next day three of ‘em came prancing down the street, seems she wasn’t no ordinary gyppo, but one of high blood. They dragged me out and up to their fields and all of them set on me, even the old man threw in a few punches. I was handy with me fists so I gave as good as I got, but me pals hadda carry me home.

‘Next morning, black-eyed and aching all over, I made my way to the pithead, an’ she was there, waitin’ with a small bundle under her arm. Seemed the family threw her out, see, an’ there she was waitin’ for me with her bangles and beads and the little bundle tied up with string.’

Hugh turned from the dark window. He seemed heavy, sluggish, and eased his body down on to the bed and lay flat, his eyes closed. ‘Maybe if the lads hadn’t been gathered around I’d have acted different. I just laughed at her, Evie, told her to be on her way with the rest of her vermin.’

He leaned up on his elbow and fingered Evelyne’s slip which was lying across the bed. ‘Her eyes went black, like a cat’s, and she lifted her hand and gave me some kind of sign, she didn’t scream or shout, it was husky, her voice, that’s what made it worse, the strange softness of her words … She cursed me, Evie, said I’d have no sons to bury me.’ He put his arm across his face and his whole body shuddered as he wept, his voice muffled. ‘By Christ she was right, I’ve seen them buried. God help me, Evie, she was right.’

Now it was Evelyne’s turn to hold her father gently, wipe his tear-stained face. She said that maybe it was fate, fate that made her cross the path of the gypsies.

‘I’ll leave for Cardiff on the first train, Da, all right?’

**

The mist clung to the top of the mountain, the grey rain drizzled, making grey, cobbled streets shine. As Evelyne turned at the corner to wave to Hugh at the bedroom window, he felt a terrible sense of loss, as if he would never see her again.

Evelyne passed three women standing at the water taps. They turned their backs to her and whispered. Evelyne held her head high and walked on.

‘You’ll not be teaching my kids, Evelyne Jones, you dirty gyppo lover.’

A group of men leaving their house for the early shift called to her and raised their fists. ‘You should know better, Evelyne Jones. Our lads not good enough for you, eh?’

Their laughter echoed down the wet street, and she hunched her shoulders as if to defend herself from their malice. She crossed the street so she wouldn’t have to face another group of women who stood waiting for the post office to open. They, too, stared at her then turned and whispered to each other. She gave them a frosty smile and almost bumped into Lizzie-Ann dragging the two kids and a pramful of laundry.