The tinker boy by Jeanne Spyker

In that winter the pine trees cuddled each other as the biting wind

The Tinker Boy

pushed and bent them. They must have! They were cold too and the ‘He left his footprints on the landscape of my memory.’

icy breath of the season licked them and blew on them and they

I’d forgotten that.

shuddered and sought a kiss from each other and remained faithful.

I’d forgotten that I had written it.

They went nowhere. They waited for us. They had waited for us

That’s not true. I never wanted to remember, that’s all.

forever.

I’m sitting here with the forgotten book open on my lap. The words I

Well, I said it was desolate. But that was my heart then. My heart

had penned pierced open my memories and I couldn’t stop them.

broke open and was filled with bitterness.

I remember the black pines of that desolate place, where the winter

But the magic of my memory, well it allows me to color in the blank

sun hung low and red, and the pond’s juices were shrouded with icy

spaces and rearrange the contours of the past when he broke into my

air that froze them with a sliver of silver frost, to be crackled and

little shell and awakened my longing for a place to dwell.

astonished by the footprints of us. The string of my thinking now

I’ll go there now and take you with me.

trails back and is tied in knots to those others in my past.

If you’ll come.

Somewhere, someone else ties his memory to me. Thomas.

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‘Them Tinkers!’ she spits as she scrubs the table clean.

gypsies. Ho no. Don’t do an honest day’s work them tinkers. An they

I watch her. ‘What do you mean?’

take the windfalls.’ She carries on with her scrubbing, long

She looks up from her scrubbing, dripping venom and sweat.

aggressive strokes of the brush.

I don’t like her, no way.

‘Windfalls are for any folk,’ I mutter.

‘Irish gypsies, girl.’ As if that means anything to me.

But she looks up at me as if I were vermin.

I carry on kneading the dough. I’d learnt well enough from her but even that didn’t mean anything to me.

I don’t want to tell you about that winter. Not yet.

The kitchen in the big house- that’s where I am. I don’t want to be here.

Spring comes in like a Lion. The pale sun is shy behind the high

‘What’s wrong with them?’ I ask, knowing the answer.

clouds that scudded across the sky. Squalls of wet spits from the

‘What’s wrong with em?’ She stopped her scrubbing and stared at

heavens dump on us. The crocuses and daffodils determine to show

me.

themselves and bit-by-bit the land warms and the wind drops and the

‘The Good Lord created them apple trees He did. Coxes, and

hidden beauty of the soil springs up with a life and gives us hope.

Russets, and cider apples He did.’ She continues her scrubbing. She

I walk the lanes and listen to the birds. They come from afar to lay

looks up at me. ‘But them’re windfalls. They be not for them

their offspring eggs, picking up bits of fluff and flotsam to endow

their nests with welcome. After the long night the land is full of

‘Why don’t you like them?’ I ask again. She doesn’t scare me. I stare

enthusiasm. I am full of enthusiasm. The sun is velvet upon my skin,

her in the face waiting for her to spill out her meanness. For mean

But the Lion roared and the rain fell, and the crocuses bowed their

she is. I’ve watched her.

heads, and the wet wind sang a mad song, and the sun struggled to

‘Wicked, that’s what they be. Full o’ superstitions and tricks. They

shine.

be no chapel goin’folk. You stay well clear of ‘em. Evil. They be

Then it was over and the Lion went out like a Lamb

evil.’ She beats the eggs viciously. And I’m glad those gypsy girls took the parsley.

The Tinkers come visiting one day and wait by the door, knocking and waiting, knocking and waiting. She opens the door. I watch her,

I didn’t ever want to go to the big house. I was fifteen and not worth

crumbling into her prejudice. I don’t like her one bit.

anything. That’s what they said. I heard them often enough. They

‘Pegs, missus, good pegs to buy.’

thought I didn’t know anything but I knew more than they did.

‘Tinkers!’ she spits. ‘Be arf with you!’

They didn’t know about lying in the forest, pine needles for a bed,

‘Why are you like that?’ I ask her. I look out of the kitchen window

looking up towards the blue heaven, feeling a heart about to

as the two tinker girls rip out some parsley and stuff it in their

burst with longing, listening to the pine trees whispering,

baskets. I smile.

whispering in the wind.

So they sent me to the big house.

She hears him and elbows me out of the way.

I carried with me everything that meant something to me.

‘There be no work ‘ere for the likes of you.’

It fitted neatly into a small bag.

‘I ain’t asking you missus,’ he says looking at me. ‘I’m asking the

And I cried when I couldn’t hold it in.

girl.’

I made my way through that summer as the summer days did.

This is too much for her. ‘Bugger arf! Bugger arf you filthy tinker!’

Angry days sometimes, with unaccustomed harshness, beating down

she shouts and slams the door.

with unwelcome wet. And surprising the next day with a smile

But I open it again and step outside while she mutters her vile

of gentle sun warmth, laughing it seemed, at the capriciousness of its

invective and heaves with indignation.

season.

He’s waiting next to the water trough, watching as I shut the door

Well, I had no control over how I felt. How could I?

behind me. ‘Don’t mind her,’ I say. ‘She’s a vicious old cow. You wouldn’t

The tinkers come, again and again. And she, of the

want any work here anyway.’ I’m blushing.

Chapel, fulminates her distaste until one day she is

‘Why are you working here then?’ he asks. He’s asking kindly, and I

too weary to waste her breath and I open the door think he really wants to know.

instead. ‘I’m looking for work,’ he says.

So I tell him and he listens and he smiles at me and tells me his name

The freedom was ahead of me, waiting for me to claim it. I sensed it

is Thomas.

on the early summer night air. Oh the taste of it! I closed my eyes

Then she bangs on the window and calls me in.

and trusted in the way. My soul sang with a tune that was new to me.

‘I walk the horses in the evening, down by the bridle path,’ he said.

So walking, I came upon their camp.

I go back into the kitchen and stare at her willing her to mock me but

The lights of their homes flickered in the warm summer night.

she doesn’t dare.

I sat and watched and listened to their noises and I liked it.

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Have you ever smelled the new cut grass on a summer eve?

I knew the bridle path. It followed the edge of the pine forest and cut

I did, when I left the big house when my duties were done.

through the bramble bushes. I waited there one summer evening not

She, the one who hated the tinkers, said ‘Go.’

long after Thomas had come looking for work.

She lolled in her chair, her day’s work done, supine in her

The air was as heavy as lead. Nothing moved, nothing sang and I

shallowness, content with her bigotry.

heard him before I saw him – whistling. And then he was there,

I hated her.

along side his horse and I liked his smile, and his green eyes looking

I drew breath and melted into the summer eve. I drank the air, and

and his way of standing, and his easygoing way of just being him.

strode down the lane. I was a girl!

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The summer spent herself, but took back the baton she held out for

I’m with Thomas in the long grass of a field nearby.

autumn and hid it, discovering she had more to give and Thomas and

He picks a buttercup gently from the earth and shows me.

I walked the lanes, clad in the warmth and laughed at summer’s last

‘Isn’t that just beautiful, girl. Look at its golden yellow face.’

hurrah!

He holds it under my chin and says, ‘ I can see the gold reflected in

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your skin. God’s made it a part of you and now you are kin.’

I never went to chapel with those chapel girls; well I did once. I sat on the hard pew and counted the knots in the wood, and held on to

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my offering and tried to sing.

I’m with Thomas in the long grass of a field nearby.

It was the Harvest Festival and I was supposed to be thankful, but I

We watch a butterfly.

was only thankful for Thomas.

‘Shh,’ he whispers, ‘can you hear her? Can you hear her wings as

I took up my offering of chrysanthemums and laid them down with

they part the sky?’

the abundance of the other’s gratitude. ************************

I wondered why the Tinkers didn’t come. Had they nothing to bring? But I knew why; of course I did.

The chapel girls and their mothers were radiant in their goodwill and

I don’t know which was the happiest time, the summer or the autumn

charity. They smiled as the chapel piled up with vegetables, flowers,

of that year. Thomas brought me to the camp one day.

new eggs, herbs and harvest.

‘They’ll like you girl,’ he said. And they did. He never called me by

“We plough the fields and scatter

my name. I don’t now why and I didn’t bother to ask him. I liked

the good seed on the land.

being just ‘girl’ I think, because it freed me.

And it is fed and watered

Laura, well she was the one who didn’t amount to much, who

By God’s Almighty Hand.”

worked up at the big house, and didn’t go to chapel.

We sang the Harvest hymns and shared out the bounty but I couldn’t

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stop thinking of the tinker folk, on the extremity of the village,

They are building a bonfire at the big house. It is nearly time to burn

whittling their pegs and they weren’t invited.

Guy Fawkes. The chapel girls go into the woods to collect chestnuts

So I never went to chapel again.

for roasting, but they don’t ask me.

I didn’t believe the chapel girls who said they wouldn’t come

I don’t care.

anyway because they were heathens.

Thomas and I will roast our own chestnuts at the gypsy camp and his

They’d lied to me those chapel girls.

old grandmother will sing around the fire and I will sing with her. I tell her in the kitchen that I am off. I don’t ever ask to go.

She sniffs to say she heard me.

November shuddered into December and the mists chilled our bones.

‘Goin’ to see your tinker boy then?’

I was kept busy at the big house preparing for Christmas. Their

I shut the door quietly on her cackles.

Christmas; not mine. I would go back and try to find accommodation

I wish it were her on the bonfire.

like the Godchild, in a place with no room for me.

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It didn’t help at all that I was one of so many. I haven’t told you yet

I love the colours of autumn. When I get my wedding dress it will be

that my belonging was not real. The whispers and glances and

made up of the autumn leaves. I shall have burnt orange ones sewn

sudden hushing that I grew up with grew a fence around me. No one

up with gold thread mixed up with plum purple and russet brown and

could get in and I couldn’t get out.

yellow ones. It shall be a long dress, a rustling warm dress with

I didn’t hear the truth until it was too late.

sleeves down to my fingertips and on my head I will have a veil of

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silver mist. And I shall look beautiful.

We are, Thomas and I, dancing through the autumn leaves, scuffling

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them up with our booted feet. We smell the wet leaves that we disturb and the smell is glorious. Our breath pulses in time with our dancing like misty ghosts. ‘I know where the mistletoe is,’ I tell him.

It is late afternoon, chilly with the wind picking up and the low sun

I bought boots and Thomas burnt grooves in the sole with a

is dying away.

soldering iron so I wouldn’t slip on the ice.

I pull him along through the trees to where the mistletoe is growing.

His old grandmother made me gloves from fox fur.

I pull off a branch and run laughing away from him.

We tramped through the pine trees, crackling the ice on the pond

I shout, ‘Catch me if you can!’ and I hope he does and I hope and

with daring, and our noses ran with the freezing air. We were the

hope that one day someone will kiss me.

only people in the world.

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As we huddled together in the grandmother’s van, softly lit with

After the snow started falling, when the freezing wind coated the

candlelight and sipped our warm rum that fired our bellies, I looked

snow with ice I was glad of the kitchen’s warmth. We worked

around at the shiny ornaments of ladies and gentlemen, figurines of

alongside each other in that New Year, she and I. I watched her

dogs and horses, the fussy cloths and ornate curtains shielding the

watching me. I listened to the sniggers of the chapel girls as they

windows, and felt for the first time ever that I was home.

passed me in the street. I hugged my happiness close to me and I

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wondered.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask them.

This was the winter I didn’t want to tell you about.

I am telling them about Thomas. Glances flit back and forth between them.

‘You should ‘a said Laura. You should ‘a said long ago. Didn’t ‘er

They tell me. They tell me with guilt dripping from them, about my

up the big ‘ouse warn yer’

mother and Thomas’s father.

‘What do you mean?’

They tell me…

I’m feeling cold inside.

They tell me and I shake my head, and I shake my head and I run.

‘What do you mean?’ I yell. Something is going to happen now.

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Something is going to shatter me and break me into little pieces.

Thomas’s grandmother is in her rocking chair in her van. ‘I couldn’t

I remember her sniggers, her meanness, and the chapel girls too.

tell yer,’ she says, not looking at me.

Those chapel girls smug and safe.

‘Thomas?’

‘Yer can’t marry ‘im, Laura. Yer can’t.’

‘I ain’t told ‘im yet,’ she says not looking at me.

I’m looking at them, first one, then the other, my mother and my

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grandmother. I don’t understand their concern. I’ve never known

It was dark all day, and the next and forever.

their skin touch mine, or their smiles wash over me.

I never went back to the big house.

I never would amount to anything they had said. I had heard them.

When I went down to the camp again it didn’t surprise me that they

‘What do you mean?’ I ask one more time in a voice I can hardly

had gone. I stood and looked around and my heart chilled with the

hear.

uselessness of it all. That life could give to me and then take it

I am old now. I shut the book and fling it in a box. I pack away the horseshoe into my bag. I am wrung out by life.

away. That I couldn’t fathom. Not then. Not ever.

My children, they have scrabbled over my bits, my past and found But not everything was taken away.

them wanting.

There where his van had stood, an altar was left. I lifted the

I’m too tired to bother. ******************************

horseshoe and held it on my breast and at last the tears began to

They came for me today. Forced jolliness. As if I didn’t know where flow.

they are taking me. “You’ll like it ma,” they say. How would they ****************************

know? I drag my feet unwilling to leave without petulance.

One day as I am walking through the woods when the winter is

I hear them whispering, jollying me along. letting go and the forest floor is greening, I think I hear a whistle.

I make them wait.

I stop and listen.

I can do that because I am old. I run my fingers along the window ledge by the front door. Denude

But it is only a spring bird calling to its mate.

now of my trinkets and markers of my journey, I clasp my bag to my And I almost believe it is Thomas.

breast and let them usher me out of my life. They still have longing, their landscape ahead of them, calling, seducing them, and promising them magic. But I have no heart for where I am heading. Treeless.

They mean well. But I am old now. And all I have left are my memories. And I can take them where I am going. As I fade into that future that has been arranged for me, I clasp that horseshoe. And in my mind I fling it away, and follow it back towards that rich day, when I was young and soft and longing, and I scuttled through the forest of pines, with the sun slicing through the branches, the blackberry bushes juicing purple tears. My horseshoe lands softly, and so do I.