Philippa Powys An extract from The Blackthorn Winter from The Sundial Press
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An extract from The Blackthorn Winter
From THE BLACKTHORN WINTER:
Philippa Powys (1886-1963)
Novelist, poet and playwright
Some Reviews of The Blackthorn Winter
Chapter Eighteen
THE WINTER
The autumn was fast passing into the winter. The last fair of the season was over. The different members of the gipsies had separated and had searched for their own particular corners until the spring brought the need to wander again. Like swallows of the ancient fancy who were said to hide in ponds, so they mysteriously departed, to reappear with the arrival of the cuckoo.
Nancy was thankful that the few gipsies who accompanied the old grandmother had chosen to hibernate, not, as some of the rest did, in the poorer parts of a large city, but to encamp upon a high tableland in the south of Dorset. There they remained sheltered from the north by a plantation of firs and beech, where rough gorse bushes guarded them from the southern gales that blew straight from the Bay of Portland, which from their high position often could be seen as a silver shield, except when in the glory of evening it became glazed in gold. There close around them lay the rough common, uncultivated and deserted, and upon which unattended their horses could wander at will.
Since their arrival, Nancy breathed more freely. The immediate fright of the last adventure had disappeared as her persecutor had gone another way with his favourites.
Though the winter at times proved cold or wet Nancy was happy, and no more did she repine at her lot. The old gipsy woman was better, and showed Nancy marked affection; and though the grand-mother had still need of her care, the trouble of it had become the girl’s pleasure and was no longer irksome to her, proving as it did to the other women the necessity of her presence. Then to wake morning after morning to the freedom of her surroundings made her rejoice and be glad. Besides, Mike was never far away, and both were openly allotted to one another. While he took the affair as granted, Nancy indulged in the illusion of idealism. Whether he warmed himself by the fire of sticks and furze, or roamed in company with the other men, she watched his movements with faithful constancy, while each of his actions, close or abroad, was streaked with the highlight of her emotions. The incident of the dark dancer was forgotten in the supplying of his needs, and in the uninterrupted fulfilment of his wants.
Bessie, with the instinct of her race, knew if the sun shone too brightly clouds would follow. In the manner of her kind she forewarned Nancy. They had been together to the nearest village for supplies. Their baskets were heavy with bread and sugar. The trackway loomed steep before them, the evening rapidly turned to night. A sea wind with mist swept upon them. The voices of the gulls were turned to mourning; invisible, they called to each other. Nancy, not used to their melancholy cries, tried in vain to overtake Bessie. At last, overcome by her load and the abrupt ascent of the hill, she cried: ‘Oh Bessie, do wait! It is so heavy. How I wish Mike had carried it.’
‘’Tis yer own fault. Ye be too easy with him.’
‘But he wanted to go the other way.’ Pausing at the edge of the road where the other waited for her, Nancy dropped her basket beside her companion and sank exhausted on the damp ground.
‘Ye are too easy with him like. He could have carried the bread in the bag well enough. Ye mark my word, ye’ll be sorry for it one day. Ye be too soft with ’en. Wait till ye have a parcel of kids and then see if ye’ll act so soapy. ’Tis a mistake, I tell thee.’
How strange it seemed to be harkening to the chiding of gipsy women while the earth in front of her stretched into infinite darkness, deepened by the covering fog. Where in old days she would have answered in quick anger, now she merely listened to the voice fading away, even as she did to those of the seagulls. Then when Bessie took up her basket Nancy arose with her, following after with weighted steps, adding as she struggled with her load: ‘But Mike is different from the rest.’
‘Tommy rot! Ye be too free with ’en. Chork him off, I tell thee.’
‘I can’t. He be all I’ve got.’
‘Thee’s been going the wrong way to keep ’en then.’
‘How, when we be happy together,’ answered Nancy, painfully trudging beside the older woman, and thinking of the terrifying railings which she had heard too often coming from the direction of the other woman’s van.
‘Laugh afore breakfast, ye cry afore night. Ye be too easy with ’en.’
‘No, not as we are now.’ They could say no more, for out of the obscurity of the mist appeared the husband of Bessie. He hailed them, and lurched forward to take his wife’s goods.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Sheer off. Take the maid’s, she be fair done. That bounder of hers wouldn’t as much carry the bread up over, and her as she is too.’
‘I ’llow she’ll learn the rights of it before her’s finished,’ the man grimly answered.
Copyright © The Estate of Philippa Powys 2007
Still Blue Beauty Durdle Door to Dartmoor Unclay Kindness in a Corner The Blackthorn Winter Hester Craddock
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2008