Echoes From A Distant Land Part 40

'But you haven't filled in the section on which country you wish to emigrate to.'

'It is not important. I do not care where I go.'

'Do you have family members who have emigrated?' she asked.

'I have no family.'

'Then you have a choice. There are a number of countries taking refugees.' She consulted her notes. The Australian government were seeking labourers and skilled workers for something called the Snowy Mountains Authority.

'How about Australia?' she asked.

He didn't answer.

'Mr Papasov? Would Australia suit you?'

'Do they have Romany people in Australia?'

'Romany people?' She lifted her head from the form, but he did not meet her eyes; nor did he elaborate. He was a serious-looking fellow, dark eyes and hair, olive skin.

'I don't understand,' she said.

'Gypsies,' he said, and still he kept his face averted.

'W-why does that matter?'

He finally looked at her, and Emerald almost flinched from the intensity of it.

'Because we have been hunted to death everywhere else,' he said.

He looked angry. This situation had not occurred before. The confidence she'd built up during the day evaporated. She stared at him, lost for words.

'Have you heard of the n.a.z.is?' he asked, then added, after reading her name badge, 'Miss Northcote-Middlebridge?'

'Of course I have,' she answered, indignant in spite of her unease.

'Then you would know of the Jews and the Holocaust.'

'I don't see what the n.a.z.is and the Holocaust has to do with your application to emigrate to -'

'But you haven't heard of the persecution of the Romanies, have you?'

She hadn't, but refused to surrender any further ground.

'Up to four million gypsies were exterminated during the war, but n.o.body really knows because most were illiterate and not registered in the camps. n.o.body cared enough to count them.

'You see, Miss Northcote-Middlebridge, Himmler also had a Final Solution for the gypsies. My family was sent to Auschwitz, to a special Gypsy Family Camp. A nice name, ah? Even better, my little brother was put in Dr Mengele's dormitory they called The Zoo. We never saw him again.

'My father was part of a sterilisation experiment. He was bombarded by X-rays from two powerful machines day after day until the skin peeled from his private parts. My mother tried to save him from the infection that was killing him by cutting off his genitals.' He paused, watching her reaction. 'Of course, he died.

'Few people know the n.a.z.is' persecution was not the first, or the last of it. Do you know, for example, that here in England, the enslavement of the Romanies was only abolished in 1856? In France we were branded and our women's heads were shaved? Elsewhere we had our ears cut off so people would know a gypsy when they saw one.'

He sat back and folded his arms across his chest. 'That is why I don't care where I go.'

Emerald felt ill and couldn't think of a response. Was there anything she could say to him to express her utter dismay?

'But that's ... that's terrible. Why haven't I heard of all this before?'

'Because we gypsies are not rich, and we have no powerful friends to represent us. We are like nothing.'

Papasov dropped his head into his hands. Now that his anger and hatred had been spent, he went limp like a rag.

Emerald reached a hand to him, but stopped short of resting it on his shoulder. She felt useless, ashamed of her ignorance, and guilty because of her sheltered position of privilege.

She wondered if that was what Elsie meant by heartache.

Emerald and Fiona took the train to Henley for the regatta, but had a two-hour wait at Twyford for the connection. They took a stroll along the railway lines to kill time, and arrived at a field with dozens of carts and caravans.

'Oh, it's gypsies,' Fiona said in a lowered voice, although they were still fifty yards from the nearest of them. 'They swarm around Henley this time of year for the regatta.'

Emerald had seen gypsy camps before, but having met the gypsy refugee, she was now more interested in them.

'Romanies,' she said, more to remind herself than to inform Fiona. 'That's their proper name.'

'Awful, dirty people. Let's go back.'

'Look,' Emerald said. 'There's someone wanting us to come.'

An old woman with a red and white head scarf was waving to them.

'Come on, Emma, let's go back and wait at the station.'

'I wonder what she wants.'

'Your money, I suspect. Thieves, the lot of them. Don't look at her; let's just go.'

'Wait a moment, Fiona. I've learned a bit about these people. I want to see what she wants.'

'Emma, if you think I'm going anywhere near that gypsy camp, then you're quite mad. Now, I'm going back to Twyford station. Are you coming or not?'

Emerald looked at the old woman again. Even from where they were standing, her smile revealed few front teeth. She wore a tattered dark green cardigan and a blue ap.r.o.n.

Fiona was inclined to be bossy with Emerald. She decided to make a stand. 'You go, Fiona,' she said. 'I want to see what she wants.'

Fiona muttered something about rape and murder, and then stormed off.

The old woman smiled her toothless smile; and a scruffy toddler ran and hid behind her ap.r.o.n as Emerald approached.

'Ah, eyes like emerald,' she said. 'You very beautiful lady.'

'Thank you.'

The urchin poked his head out and looked up at Emerald. When she moved to touch his head he dived for cover.

The old woman cackled. 'Him not like English lady. You like fortune-telling?'

Emerald looked around the camp. It was empty except for a handful of tiny children and a few tethered horses.

'Where is everyone?' Emerald asked.

'Gone to Henley. You like me tell your fortune?'

Emerald looked back towards the path. Fiona was gone. Her fortune would be something to laugh about when they were together on the train.

'All right,' she said, and followed the woman to a table and chairs set beside the caravan.

Emerald laid her hand, palm upwards, on the table. The gypsy woman took it; her skin was as dry as parchment, but she held Emerald's hand as delicately as she would a bird. She lowered her head over the table and began to mutter inaudibly in a foreign language. After some minutes, Emerald began to grow bored with the old woman's charade of authenticity.

'Am I going to marry a rich and handsome man?' she asked, smiling.

The gypsy remained hunched over the table, mumbling.

'Well? I haven't got all day, you know.'

The woman lifted her head and Emerald recoiled. Her eyes had rolled back into her head: with only the whites showing, she was a ghostly sight. Emerald shifted her chair, ready to rise and flee, but her hand was caught in the woman's now surprisingly strong grip.

'I see ... I ... you. I see babies. Half black, half white.'

The white eyes stared at her, seeing but unseeing.

'Who are these babies? Are they my babies?' Emerald asked, not sure what she thought now. It was too bizarre.

'No. Black and white. Boy and girl. Black and white. Man and woman. They call ... far away. They call you. I hear ... recha.'

'Recha? What is recha?'

The gypsy was silent for a long moment.

'I hear recha.'

Her head nodded forwards. A moment later she sat up, eyes wide.

'Are you all right?' Emerald asked, startled by the sudden transformation from white-eyed sleepwalker to haggard old woman.

The gypsy blinked, and cackled. 'Two bob,' she said, her wrinkled hand turned up on the table.

'Two bob!'

It was outrageous, but Emerald had no recourse. Thieves indeed. She stood up in a huff, angry with herself for succ.u.mbing to the rort. She tossed the two shillings onto the table.

'Two bob for two minutes or so,' she muttered. 'Highway robbery if you ask me.' She was about to leave, but turned back. 'Anyway, what does recha mean?'

'Recha?'

'Yes, you said recha. What does it mean? In English.'

The old woman appeared puzzled. 'In English it mean ... I don't know how you say.'

'Oh! Never mind.'

She stormed off.

Emerald arrived in Henley with Fiona, a day ahead of Peter and Michael. They found a group of about a dozen young men lounging about on their cottage porch. Fiona whispered they were some of her brother's friends from Cambridge. The young men pretended to take no notice of the girls, barely interrupting their conversations to be introduced by Fiona's brother, Laurence.

The men wore a mixture of the latest fashions: fedora hats, double-breasted pin-striped suits with wide shoulders and high-cut baggy pants in brown or navy. The wide trousers tapered down to very narrow cuffs sitting on spectator brogues in black-or brown-and-white, very popular for jitterbugging - the latest dance craze. Their short, wide ties were boldly coloured or striped. There were elaborate clasps to hold the ties and suspenders to hold up their trousers. Cigarettes hung from their mouths, Bogart-like, and their slicked hair was parted arrow-straight down the left.

They were all very sophisticated and similar, except for one, who wore what appeared to be worker's trousers of coa.r.s.e blue denim and a polo shirt under an old knitted vest. He was tall, and had uncontrollable blond hair and an unfashionable moustache. His name was Raph.

'It means wolf,' he said to Emerald when Laurence left them alone after the introductions.

'I see,' she said, thinking that his face had something of an angular shape to it, wolf-like. 'I have no idea what emerald means.'

'Don't be f.u.c.king daft,' he said.

She flushed, but noted he was studying her closely. She controlled her response, which under normal circ.u.mstances would be to simply walk away, however she noticed there was a smirk lurking behind his guarded expression. She stayed, mainly because she didn't want to reveal she was shocked by such language.

'It's your eyes,' he continued after it was obvious she wouldn't respond to his crudity. 'Unless of course you were born in May, in which case you've been named after your birthstone. If you believe in that stuff.'

'You do,' she responded, 'otherwise you wouldn't know it was the May birthstone.'

'I don't believe in any of that bulls.h.i.t.'

'What do you believe in?' she asked. 'If anything.'

'I believe in the struggle of the working cla.s.ses.'

'What does that mean? Exactly.'

'It doesn't surprise me you don't know. You're one of the moneyed cla.s.s. You have servants you couldn't give a s.h.i.t about, with first names you don't know. You have a big house in town and a holiday house in at least one of the counties. Your father owns factories and pays the workers s.h.i.t, and your mother does charity work for the poor who wouldn't be so poor if they got a decent wage in the first place.'

'What makes you think you know anything about my family?'

'I can tell by the way I shocked you with my use of the old-English word f.u.c.k.'

'You didn't shock me at all, just confirmed my low opinion of Cambridge men.'

'I'm not a Cambridge man, I'm proud to say.'

'I'm sure Cambridge would be pleased to hear that.'