The Cure of Souls (38 page)

‘Ah, well,’ Isabel said, ‘you’ve got to look at the whole picture, isn’t it? Son of his father, when all’s said and done.’

Lol recalled what Gerard Stock had said in the Hop Devil about Conrad Lake. ‘You mean some kind of Nazi?’

‘Wasn’t far out. They still don’t say too much out loud, round yere, about all that, because old Perry-Jones isn’t dead yet, and Perry-Jones and Conrad Lake were part of the same disease.’

‘Armbands, Stock said.’

‘Nothing so obvious. Right-wing politics, racist stuff – you don’t get so much of that in the country. You get
Tories
, of course. They’re all bloody Tories, the old kind, stuck into their Little England feudal ways. No tub-thumping, though, no rabble-rousing. It’s the cities where the real extremism starts, isn’t it, the cities where all the immigrants go? How many black faces you ever see behind the wheel of a tractor? Life just trundled on in places like this: the same families, the same faces, the same hairstyles…’ Isabel reached out and fingered a bine. ‘Except in September, of course.’

‘The hop harvest.’

‘September, see, that was when the people of the Frome Valley had a taste of what life was like in the cities – drunkenness, debauchery, robbery, violence. All those thousands of common working-class folk from the Black Country and the Valleys. People like me. In fact my mam and my auntie used to come round yere hop-picking when they were young. Great times, she always says. Hard work, but a lot of laughs.’

‘Debauchery?’

‘Oh, no more than you’d expect with all those thousands of people and not much to do at night but drink and flirt. Got out of hand sometimes. And there was jealousy and rivalry… bar brawls, beatings, the odd stabbing. The Hop Devil – that was a no-go area for local people until about halfway through October. Bit like the Wild West. Then, one night, a farmer’s boy… they found his body in the Frome.’

‘What, murdered?’

‘Never proved. This was the early fifties, they didn’t have fancy forensics back then. But it was enough for Perry-Jones. He was off… “These barbarians…” ’

‘The Welsh?’

‘Thank you, Lol. No, the Welsh, mostly they just sang. This was the gypsies.’

‘Ah.’

‘The Welsh looked like everybody else, but the gypsies looked like foreigners, another race. The gypsies weren’t sociable. Clannish. Set up their own camps and only mixed with their own kind. Not that they weren’t loyal to their employers, because they were – more than any of the others, in some ways. But they were a race apart, and they knew it. What are they, originally? From India or somewhere?’

‘I think so.’

‘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.’

Lol pushed the wheelchair back into the lane. He wondered when God might think it appropriate to ask her exactly why she’d been so afraid of Simon going into Stock’s kiln?

E
IRION TOOK THE
big roundabout at Carmarthen on two wheels, it felt like, throwing Jane into the passenger door. ‘There’s a station here, right?’ she demanded, but he didn’t react. He drove on, until, quite soon, there was only open countryside in front of them.

‘I did not ask for this,’ Jane said. ‘I did not want this.’

Eirion was heading north towards Llandeilo. He was, like, serious. He was even wearing his baseball cap the right way round.

‘I’d really hoped,’ Jane said, ‘that you were not going to turn out to be one of those guys who think women can’t transport themselves from A to B on their own.’

He still didn’t respond.
Well, stuff it
, Jane was thinking now,
why should I complain if he wants to drive me to Hereford and then turn the car around and drive all the way back to the bosom of his incredible family? Except
…

‘This is Gwennan’s car, isn’t it?’

‘She lets me use it,’ Eirion said through his teeth, eyes fixed on the road. ‘And anyway, they’ve still got Dad’s car.’

‘As I understand it, she only lets you use it because you’ve got some heavy dirt on her. Like that she’s really English or something?’

‘If you’re just trying to make me dump you at the roadside,’ Eirion said, ‘it won’t work.’

‘I was merely trying to envisage the scenario when little Sioned and little Lowri returned from
y siop
, maybe half an hour ago, to find out that we’d pissed off without them, and their mummy discovered she was obliged to take care of them for the
entire
day. I would have gone on to make the point that whatever dirt you have on her – and I would be the last one
ever
to ask – would then count for like… not a great deal. I just make the point.’

Eirion slowed the BMW. She saw that, despite the air-conditioning, he was sweating.

‘I just don’t want you to get disinherited in favour of those spooky kids, is all,’ Jane said. ‘It would like distress me if you were to be taken away from the Cathedral School and forced to work as a rent boy in Abergavenny.’

‘What makes you think I don’t already?’

‘You’re not pretty enough.’

‘Why don’t you call your mum?’ Eirion said.

‘It’s not your problem.’

‘Then why did you tell me about it?’

‘We’ve been through this. I just didn’t want you to think it was a racial thing when I went over the wall.’

Eirion pulled into the side of the road. Though it was a main road, it was still fairly quiet. The hills were low and green and there were broadleaf woods. Apart from the colour of the soil, it didn’t look dramatically different from Herefordshire.

Eirion turned to face her and took off his baseball cap. His eyes were solemn, his famously amazing smile now in cold storage.

‘I’ll be straight with you, Jane, I’m going to be in deep shit over this. Gwennan and Dad have a big lunch today in Tenby with some Arts Council people and National Assembly delegates and a cultural delegation of Irish-speakers from Ireland. It’s informal, but there could be a significant PR contract in it for Gwennan, in connection with this pan-Celtic cultural festival.’

‘Turn the car round
now
,’ Jane said with this, like, dark menace.