The Cure of Souls

‘And heathens. Oh, Perry-Jones made the most of all that. Ambitious, he was, see – only a young man, then, in his twenties, and a firebrand. Didn’t care what he said. Well, nobody did back then. No such word as racism. You call the gypsies a bunch of no-good, lying, evil, murderous bastards, nobody’s going to jump on you for not being politically correct. “Get them out!” he’s screaming. “Clean this filth from our farms!” ’

‘He said that? With the war not long over? What about the Holocaust? All the gypsies who went into the death camps? Was that not fresh in people’s memories?’

‘If you listen to my mam, Lol, all that was fresh in people’s memories back then was the war itself and what a relief it was all over. Besides, I think it was years later before they even knew the extent of the Holocaust. Anyway, Perry-Jones, he was up for the County Council and looking for a future in Parliament, and he got a fair bit of support, blaming the gypsies for every bit of trouble. A lot of people, they have a natural fear of anything they don’t know about. And nobody knows about the Romany folk, do they, except other Romanies? Not to this day.’

Lol recalled that Al Boswell had been among the Romany pickers at Knight’s Frome, back then, and wondered how he’d managed to drink in the same bar as Oliver Perry-Jones. Nonconfrontational is all we are, Al had said. He’d have to be.

Isabel explained how Perry-Jones was forever on at Old Man Lake – this was Conrad’s father – to ban the gypsies from Knight’s Frome for good. In the nineteen-forties and fifties, the Lakes owned the two biggest farms in the village.

‘But Old Man Lake, he said the gypsies were good workers and that’s all that concerned him – wasn’t one of his boys that wound up dead in the river.’

‘But if there was no proof—’

‘No proof whatsoever. But then the old man, he died, and Conrad took over, and Conrad was very ambitious, too, went at it like an industrialist, buying up every bit of ground going, until he owned what amounted to the whole of Knight’s Frome. And he was around the same age as Perry-Jones, and a close friend of his, and Perry-Jones was on the council by then and oiling wheels for Conrad. So… well, the first thing Conrad does is cut the gypsy pickers’ pay, hoping this will drive them away. Didn’t work – they still came back. Resentful, sullen, but they came back. No loyalty to him now, mind, and a good deal more poaching and theft, including his wife, it was said.’

Lol stopped pushing. They were at the crest of a rise, and the land before them sloped panoramically away, low hills and woodland, towards Hereford.

‘His wife?’

Isabel peered over her shoulder at him. ‘Nobody’s told you that?’

He shook his head. Isabel smiled.

‘His first wife, this was, not Adam’s mother. Caroline, her name, and quite a prize – high-born beauty, god- daughter of the Earl of so-and-so. And, well, she just disappeared one day, isn’t it? Gone. Vanished. And it was never explained. Well… the police certainly weren’t called in, so it’s clear that Conrad must’ve known where she was and was too proud to let it out. But this was the height of the picking season, and the rumour was she’d been bewitched by the gypsies – seduced, kidnapped, spirited away. That’s what they do, isn’t it, gypsies? Conrad never mentioned it, never a word, but that was it for the Romanies… and the tinkers and what-have-you. Conrad’s manager told them to take their money, clear out and never come back.’

Lol pushed the chair into a passing place near the bottom of the lane and sat on the grass verge in front of Isabel. ‘When was this?’

‘Oh… the sixties? You don’t hear the full truth about it, ever, because this was the time when machines were taking over from the hop-pickers, generally, so most of them were going to be out of a job soon anyway – the gypsies, the Dudleys and the Welsh, all of them together. And some people still say Conrad kept quiet because his wife had run off with one of his own friends, and he just took it out on the gypsies because they were there and because Perry-Jones was his best mate. Today you’d have questions asked, but in the sixties people knew their place – though that was about to change, mind – and Conrad Lake was the boss, and he owned the whole bloody village, so…’

‘This was when he was living at the house that was originally behind Stock’s kiln?’

Isabel’s eyes shone. ‘Correct. It was after Caroline left, he started building his new place. Turned his back on the old farmhouse, knocked it down, just left the kiln. As if the house itself was responsible for the failure of his marriage.’

‘And the gypsies all went?’

‘Oh, they went. In their own time and their own way. The hop-picking, see, that was part of their seasonal cycle – Hereford, for the hops and apples, then down to Evesham for the plums, what have you? They went… but not before buildings were set on fire, fences cut, stock loosed into the hop-yards. And that was when the police arrived in force.’

‘Not very non-confrontational.’

‘The police?’

‘The gypsies. Al Boswell says the Romanies are essentially non-confrontational.’

‘Aye, well, what had happened, they accused Lake, or one of his managers, of taking one of their own women. An enormous outcry, there was. Police out searching for her. In the end, I think the cops decided the gypsies had made it up, to get back at Lake. The gypsies of course, were saying – still say – that the coppers never really tried to find her because she was only a gypsy, see, and not worth shit. Maybe something in that. At least some things have changed for the better since the sixties.’

‘What do you really think?’

‘Well, I don’t know, Lol. But Stewart Ash thought he did. Gone into it all, he had. And of course it was all going to be in his book, in detail.’

Lol blinked. ‘Which book?’

‘The book he was working on when he died. The book the Smith boys were supposed to be helping him research. He was going into the whole business: the reasons the Romanies were banished from Knight’s Frome, never to return – if you don’t include Al – and what really happened to the girl. Rebekah, she was called, with a k and an h. Rebekah Smith.’

‘Smith?’

‘Oh, it’s a big tribe, Lol, the Smiths. None bigger. Doesn’t mean she was related to the boys who killed Stewart.’

‘It does give them a reason for not killing Stewart, though, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose you could say that.’

‘And did Stewart claim to know what happened to this Rebekah Smith?’

‘I don’t know. The thing is, Lol, you can’t libel the dead, and if Stewart wanted to suggest that Conrad Lake was in some way connected with the so-called disappearance of Rebekah Smith, there was nothing much to get in his way…’

‘Except Adam Lake, maybe. How much does Stock know?’

Isabel spread her hands. ‘Who can say? Especially now.’

‘Is there a manuscript?’

‘I’ve no idea. I don’t even know if he’d started writing it before he was murdered. But, yes, you’re right, of course, it wouldn’t make young Adam feel any more at home to have some book on sale for ever and ever in Bromyard and Ledbury and Hereford, linking his late father with some nasty old scandal. Especially,’ Isabel smiled gently, ‘as the local people have always said – and Sally Boswell will confirm this for you – that the terrible collapse of the Lake family hop-empire is down to what you might call a very traditional Romany curse.’

‘Of course.’ The aphids, the red spiders, the white mould… and the Verticillium Wilt. The four plagues of the Frome Valley.

And the Lady of the Bines – where did she fit in?

Lol stood up. ‘So that was where Stock was coming from.’

‘Bit clearer now, is it?’

‘That’s a joke, right?’ Lol said.

‘You asked God,’ said Isabel, ‘and God, in His mysterious way, asked me to fill you in on a few basics. Can we go back now? I need a wee, I do, and I can’t just nip behind a bush any more. Not till I’ve been to Lourdes.’