Читать книгу God's Sparrows - Philip Child - Страница 8

I

St. Horatius School was a thick-walled stone house built as a residence during the Crimean War; it was as square, as angular, as bleakly severe as the Scot who had planned it. Built before the days of central heating, it still lacked a furnace. Each classroom had an open fireplace during winter; but in the cold, wet, autumn weather the stone walls of the classrooms sweated clammily. “Boys should become used to res augustae ,” said Mr. Mandover, the headmaster. “No better training in the world. I allow of no pampering in my school!”

The cornerstones of Mr. Mandover’s theory of education were cricket and Latin. Cricket, he believed, taught one to play games like a gentleman, while the study of a dead language, he maintained, built character by forcing a boy to do regularly what he did not want to do. “Justum et tenacem propositi vir. Tenacem propositi — ‘tenacious of,’ Thatcher? That makes neither English nor Latin nor common sense! Remember, Thatcher, that in translating Latin — called by egregious oafs a dead language! — you are dealing not with a bludgeon but a rapier. Translate with that subtlety you would use in cutting a fast ball through the slips. Horace is giving us a picture of the ideal man. ‘Tenacious of,’ indeed!”

Mr. Mandover began the day at St. Horatius with a chapter from the Bible followed by other religious exercises, such as the proper intoning of “when two or three are gathered together.” Religion attended to for the day, justice followed. “Tripp!” Mr. Mandover would expel the name in a voice that cut through the torpid atmosphere of schoolboy devotion like a whiplash. No further explanation was needed. Knowing the ceremonial of punishment, Tripp would stand up slowly and march to the centre of the room.

“How many hours, Tripp?”

“Five, sir.”

If a tongue-lashing followed, the class relaxed, for Mr. Mandover considered it unjust to mingle exhortation and punishment. Usually, however, Mandover would send the culprit to his study for the stick.

Silence while Tripp went for the cane. Mr. Mandover rustled papers, and the class held its breath wondering whether Tripp would whimper. Tripp returned and handed the cane handle foremost to Mr. Mandover. The cane descended whish-h — whack and the victim, practised in the art of taking a licking, lowered his hand with the swing of the stick to minimize the impact.

“Now, Tripp. Don’t let me see you here again for at least a month.”

“Yes, sir. No, sir.”

In all this there was nothing degrading. It was felt that one was not properly blooded, one had not really smelt powder, until one had taken a caning without a whimper. At ten years and under, the chastisement was light and private, administered on a part of the anatomy specially padded by nature for the contingency. Over ten and up to adolescence, the culprit, having reached years of dignity if not of discretion, received a swipe for each hour of detention on alternate palms — in public. The occasion satisfied all the canons of Greek tragedy. There was dignity, ceremonial, a chorus, and a sense of the ineluctable justice of the gods (shared even by the protagonist). On the part of the onlookers there was an enjoyable feeling of awe and terror, if not of pity, which might have been expressed by the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I, Smith Minor.”

Spring brought long, lazy afternoons of cricket on green grass under the clear sky, before time had any particular meaning. Sometimes when there was a match with another school, there would be a short report in the paper. “For St. Horatius, Thatcher Minor scored forty-two runs. Thatcher Major also did well.” The chink of a ball well hit, the stately march of flannelled figures after an over, the thrill of seeing the bails fly after a well-pitched ball, the fearful delight of stalking out from the pavilion under all eyes to take the first ball; these things one remembered after years when one told oneself, “Anyway, I had a jolly happy childhood.”

Once Dan learnt his new world, he took it pretty much for granted. He learnt the different sizes and sorts of human nature. There were amiable scamps, like Geoffrey Tripp. There were boys who were clever and unpopular, like Flint, and boys who were both clever and popular, like Alastair; there were boys who got bullied and boys who bullied; there were those masters you could rag and those you couldn’t. These were not matters for speculation, they were simply facts.

Alastair, easily the leader in all he attempted, was sought by everyone. But with one exception, Dan chose his friends rather than they him. The exception was his cousin Quentin Thatcher.

One day Jiffy Tripp greeted him in the hall with the news that there was a new boy in the school, a boarder.

“I know him,” said Dan, “he’s my cousin.”

“Well, if you ask me, he’s a bit of an ass. Last night during study Mandover asked him if he could translate. He said he could and — listen Granny! — he spouted the whole passage, quantities and all. Then he told Mandover he’d been taught to pronounce Latin as the Romans pronounced it, not the English.”

Dan grinned. “And what did Cut-to-slips say?”

“Stared at him for a minute — you know, as if he were a laboratory specimen not well pickled, and said that German methods of scholarship were rapidly making it impossible for a gentleman to quote Latin at all.… Come on! The fellows are going to rag him.”

One of the doors in the great hall led into a corridor opening into what had once been a scullery. Now it was lined with handwash basins, and it was a polite fiction that the boys washed their hands and faces before going home from school. This room was sometimes put to more clandestine uses, and at the present moment it and the corridor leading to it were crammed with boys, their backs turned to Dan and Tripp.

A tall, dark boy with a fiery, contemptuous expression faced the jeering ring of boys.

“What’s your name?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Well, you don’t want us to call you Grubby or Hatpin or Stinkfish, do you?”

“My name’s Thatcher.”

“An honourable name! Alastair, Granny, where are you? Here’s your long lost uncle from Patagonia. I bet you’re a nigger, Thatcher, aren’t you? What’s your full name?”

“George Pilgrim Thatcher.”

“Is your name Pilgrim!”

“Yes, it is — if it’s any of your business!”

It seemed too good to be true. Several boys embraced one another in convulsive merriment.

“Well, Pill, what have you come here for? Come on, Pill, speak up. You had enough to say for yourself last night!”

“To go to school.”

“To go to school! Now isn’t that nice for us. Pill’s going to school with us, and maybe if we’re nice he’ll teach us how to read our Latin properly. Well, Pill, so you’ll feel at home, we’re going to initiate you into the Order of the Bath.”

Dan pushed through the circle and said briefly: “No, you’re not!”

“Hello, Granny! Look here, is he really your cousin?”

“Yes, he is. And if you want to know what he’s here for, I’ll tell you. His parents were drowned on the Titanic , and Pill was in a lifeboat for forty-eight hours.”

Mockery gave place to curiosity and even respect in the faces of his tormentors.

“Say, Pill, were your parents really drowned?”

“Yes.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes.”

“Holy smoke!”

“Come on, Pill,” said Dan, “we’ll go and get some ginger beer.”

They went down the path to the tuck shop. “You’re snivelling, you mug!” exclaimed Dan. “You don’t need to bother about them. You should have seen what they did to me when I was a new boy.… Besides, they think you’re a stout fellow. Your parents were drowned on the Titanic — see?”

Quentin stamped his foot — just like a girl! thought Dan — and said furiously: “I’m not snivelling. I’m angry! And ‘I loathe the vulgar mob and avoid them’ arceo valgum profanum , you know.” Dan gaped at him. “I’m going to be a great writer, and great writers are always misunderstood by the mob.… I’m not snivelling! I’ll punch you if you say I am. It’s because you’re so darned decent.… Look here, Dan, let’s swear friendship forever and ever.”

Dan stared at him curiously, not unkindly, but as at a strange animal. “You’re a queer fish, Pill. You’re like my sister. She always wants to cry when she’s happy or sad. She cries when I remember to give her a birthday present, and she cries when I don’t. If she doesn’t give me one, I get mad as blazes, but I don’t cry!”

Quentin paid not the least attention to this. He went on ardently. “And you’ll see what a good friend I’ll be. I bet you there’ll be a war someday and I’ll save your life.… Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Be brothers-in-arms .”

“Not yet. I’ll see.… There’s no war now. Let’s forget it, Pill, and get that ginger beer.”

“I’ll never forget it,” said Quentin.… “All right, I’ll buy the beer and we’ll drink a toast to our friendship. And will you kindly remember not to call me ‘Pill’? I’ll poke you one if you do.”

Quentin boarded at St. Horatius, and being a year older than Dan, he became Thatcher Maximus. The boys let him alone because of his sharp tongue, but he never won popularity, for he was nearsighted and had to peer at people and he was no good at games; try how he would — and he tried again and again — he could not catch a ball to save his life. Moreover, he was too proud to accept the role of the clever ass who is a mug at games. He and Dan were opposites. Dan was steady, except when he lost his temper; Quentin was changeable and moody. He was both timid and reckless and, plagued by too vivid an imagination, he was afraid of a thousand things — and dared not give in to a single fear.

The boys were growing up. Growing outward, they burst the chrysalis and began to show the kind of insect they were going to become; growing inward, they became aware of other boys as different persons from themselves. Coming back from the holidays, one found one’s best friend turned into an alien creature in long trousers with an uncertain command over his voice.

Mr. Mandover annually delivered a lecture to those boys who had newly assumed the toga virilis. Tilting his chair back and twisting his moustache, he talked with complacency and gusto.

“For tomorrow,” he began, “you will write an essay on the ‘Awkward Age.’ The Awkward Age is when a boy first realizes that he is grubby without and unkempt within. Plastered with mud, he comes running into the house screaming at the top of his voice. Having been told to clean his boots lest worse befall him and because there are guests in the house, he wipes them off on the guest towel, stumbles down the stairs, and rushing into the room where his mother is giving tea to some ladies, he trips over a chair and measures his length on the floor. Recovering himself, he has eyes for nothing but the cake plate, whence he seizes a cake in each hand, and cramming his mouth, full rushes from the room without having uttered a single civilized word. He has an awkward body and a clumsy little soul. If by instinct and nurture he is a gentleman, he will content himself with sticking hatpins into his fellows and perpetrating strange odours in the classroom; if, however, he is a cad, he will pull the wings off flies and bully smaller boys — and worse. Though he tells the truth manfully, he is still a savage. Nonetheless, he is beginning to realize dimly that he is no longer a child. To be sure, he has not yet looked at himself and seen himself for the shameless little ruffian he is, nor has he looked below the surface of his fellows. In his folly he is still inclined to say of Shrimp Minor, ‘Shrimp Minor is a worm,’ simply because Shrimp Minor is no good at games and cries if you look at him — not realizing that Shrimp is handicapped by bad eyesight and can’t fight and knows it.… Mark my words, boys, your comings and your goings are observed by your elders. Not a day passes in which I do not have to write a letter of recommendation for some old boy whose virtues and failings — whose failings and virtues I know even better than my own. Most of you, by an incredible miracle of nature will eventually turn into men. One or two of you — I name no names, but I know the ones I speak of, and let them beware ! — will, I am convinced, end their days hanging higher than Haman.… Three pages on the ‘Awkward Age’ — not less than ten words to the line — for tomorrow at nine o’clock.”

II

Pen remarked in the noncommittal voice he always used when speaking of his brother-in-law : “Murdo thinks Europe is drifting toward war. He thinks he ought to come back to the West.”

“Sounds like Murdo,” said Charles; “he left Japan because he thought there would be trouble in China, now he wants to leave China because he hopes there will be trouble at home.”

“‘Hopes,’ Charles?” exclaimed Euphemia severely.

“Oh, he doesn’t call it hope. But make no mistake about Murdo. It’s meat and drink to him to be in the centre of a row! I know my brother; he’s a restless soul.”

It was “after church” in the evening and, as usual, the family had gathered together for high tea. On Sunday evenings no servants were present and the family relaxed and expanded, each member talking of his own interests to whomever would listen, so that before long, by a process of social selection, there was always a cleavage of sexes. The men (and Euphemia) discussed the affairs of the universe, the women were soon engrossed in their practical world within a world. Everyone was talking except Joanna, who was quiet as a mouse, liking best to listen, and Tessa Thatcher, who ate scarcely anything and who hoped that, presently, her husband would feel the quality of her silence.

Alastair, to stir up mischief, began to talk of the Thatcher family motto. Balancing a fork on his finger to attract attention, he said: “I came across the Thatcher motto today. It’s pretty loathsome.” Pen looked up quickly and exclaimed: “Indeed! What’s wrong with it?” — “It’s so stuffy, Father. Virtute. So obvious, so trite. They might as well hurl the Bible in your face.… What’s the Burnet motto?” Three voices answered in unison. “Curre ad astras. ” — “That means, ‘curry favour with the big wigs,’ doesn’t it?” asked Alastair innocently. Fanny who had not much humour cried indignantly: “No! It means, roughly, ‘hitch your wagon to a star.’ Does that mean anything to you, young sir? It ought to, it’s four hundred years old!”

“As a matter of fact,” put in Charles, “the first Burnet who could steal enough money to buy a coat of arms, proved the motto by running away at the battle of Flodden. But everybody ran at Flodden and you’ll find that the Burnets are never left behind.” “Well,” said Alastair, “I think everyone ought to make their own motto, so I’ve thought of one in French because French is the language of chivalry.” — “What is it,” asked Euphemia incautiously. “Toujours les entrailles ,” said Alastair. After a pause, during which the family translated this effort, Maud said severely: “Alastair, children should be seen but not heard!”

The conversation divided into streams, each stream isolated by the general din. Charles turned to Tessa Thatcher. “You’re very quiet tonight, Tessa, mia . It isn’t like you.” Because he was talking to a pretty woman, his voice curled up into an ingratiating laugh at the end of his sentence.

“Don’t you ever feel, Charles, that you want to go inside and shut the door after you?”

“Not often. I’d rather be outside. I like noise and chatter and gaiety.”

“But aren’t you ever serious?”

“As little as possible. You know what the sundial says?”

“What does it say?”

“It says, horas non numero nisi serenas. I’ll translate it for you. ‘I record only the sunny times’ .… That’s me, Tessa. But I should have thought that you, too —”

“Much you know about me, Charles Burnet.… Sometimes I could almost scream at people’s lack of sensibility. People say the same things over and over simply because they’re used to saying them and without ever thinking what they mean!”

“Who, for instance?”

“Well … Pen and my husband. They’re talking about war and the institution of marriage and stoicism — whatever that is. Words, Charles! Who cares about war in the Balkans? I don’t! But Daniel says we all think too much about ourselves. He says we should all get along better if we only took life quietly and were a little stoical.… Do you know, sometimes I could almost hate men!”

This was more than Charles had bargained for, and instinct warned him of something wrong. He was afraid of women when they were like this. He liked to feel gay and frivolous and he did not like to look too closely at things.… Better turn it off lightly, he thought, then she would see that he didn’t want to —

“Well, Charles, what do you think of me? You think I’m always empty headed?”

“No, not empty headed.”

“Empty hearted, then. That’s what you really think of me! … What are you thinking of, Charles? Now! Right this minute!”

Something to say popped into Charles’s head, and being Charles, he said it without thinking first. “I was thinking of Aurora and Tithonus — but you wouldn’t understand.”

“Aren’t we literary? … As a matter of fact, I do understand. You mean the myth about Aurora asking every good gift for her lover except one — youth, so that, though Tithonus is immortal, he is old?”

“I swear to heaven, Tessa — ” began Charles, horrified. “What a God-forgotten fool I am!”

But Tessa said recklessly: “Why not say it, Charles … only, you see, it isn’t true. Daniel’s sun doesn’t rise by me. And he isn’t immortal — not even old.… And I do love him. It isn’t as simple as that!”

“Tessa, will you believe me when I say —”

Tessa leaned forward, laying her hand on his sleeve, and lowered her voice. “We’re good friends, aren’t we, Charles?”

“Always have been. Always will be!”

“Then keep it to yourself, dear Charles.… You see, it’s not Daniel’s fault. I’m just a restless person, that’s all.”

At one end of the table Maud was reflecting how odd it was that men could get so very excited over ideas. “And why do they love to talk about war?” The word always chilled her heart and made her unreasonably angry. “But they like to. In their hearts they think of it as adventure and change: boys to the end of their days, every one of them.”

She relaxed and took in the family with an affectionate look, feeling at the very centre of it. She thought, if only Daniel could go out to people; so formal, so humourless. Not even to Tessa, so much younger than he. And she is so quiet it frightens one. I’d rather see her flighty and gay as she was before she lost her baby — If only she were well enough to have another child —

Maud’s thoughts were interrupted by a piercing yell from Dan. “You hound! My shin! You wait!”

“He was asleep,” explained Alastair coolly, “so I just woke him up.”

“I wasn’t, I was thinking.… Mother, why do people always speak of Uncle Murdo as restless?”

Everyone felt that this was an awkward question.… But really, why did people? Each one there had his own private opinion of the matter. Pen secretly suspected that Murdo’s faith had been undermined; Fanny believed that Murdo honestly enjoyed being in the thick of trouble, while Maud merely included Murdo’s restlessness in the eternal restlessness of all males. Euphemia said sentimentally: “I suppose the children are old enough to be told, Maud? Your uncle, children, was unfortunate in his marriage. I think it has preyed on his mind a good deal.”

“Bosh, Euphemia!” cried Fanny.

But Alastair, who had reached the brash age of adolescence, was not satisfied. “I suppose you mean about his wife running away with someone better looking? Why didn’t he divorce her and marry someone else, like the Eltons?”

Euphemia gasped, and Maud exclaimed, “Alastair!”

“Well, why didn’t he? I would have.”

“Nice people don’t talk —” began Maud.

“Let’s hear no more of it, Alastair!” said Pen sternly. “One would think you’d no breeding at all.”

Dan, who thought slowly, was struggling with an idea. “But I think —” he began.

“Children! You may all leave the table,” ordered Pen.

“You see, you juggins?” commented Alastair very unfairly. “You never know when to stop.”

Sulkily the children trooped from the room. Alastair and Joanna went upstairs to get some sheet music.

It seemed to Dan that he had got hold of an important idea, and he wanted to be by himself to wrestle with it. He went into the drawing room where there was a fine fire blazing away; moving a sofa in front of the hearth, he lay down and watched the flames.

In the dining room, with the constraint of the children removed, the grown-ups were talking more freely. With her infallible instinct for saying the wrong thing, Euphemia was discussing divorce. “Divorce is much commoner nowadays because people lack the spiritual resources they used to have.” Secretly it pleased Euphemia a little when marriages were unsuccessful.

Placing the tips of his fingers together with precision, Daniel Thatcher ventured to disagree with his sister-in-law . “I believe the usual cause of divorce is that one partner demands too much of the other. ‘There is always one who loves and one who is loved’ is a French proverb containing much shrewd truth. Yes. No one should place his whole life utterly in the hands of his partner, keeping nothing back for his private life. No. A man should always possess his own soul away from even those closest to him. How else can he be secure? He should guard his reserve against all importunings. Indeed, yes!”

To Tessa, her husband’s dry, precise voice had suddenly become intolerable. She could not reach him at all. No matter what happened he would regard it judicially as an intellectual problem. He would put his finger tips carefully together, look at her mildly from that inner place you could not reach, and say: “Let us consider it calmly, my dear.” … If only she could really shake his self-sufficiency just once and make him suffer!

She burst out: “Oh, Daniel! Daniel! That’s just selfish! I think people ought to spend themselves on others even if it destroys them!”

All around the table, chairs creaked from the slight, startled movements of those sitting on them. Daniel blinked and changed colour. Called back to the domestic relations from the pure intellectual pleasure of expressing an idea with precision, he remembered that Tessa always had the faculty of making him feel uneasy. She made one feel that one’s ideas always had some personal application.

Maud tried to change the subject, but Tessa would not let her. Flushed and panting, she released a reckless torrent of words: “Why shouldn’t Murdo have got a divorce, and why shouldn’t his wife? You have only one life to live, and after a woman’s forty, she might as well be dead! … I’m sorry! I know I’m making a scene.… I didn’t mean to.… I don’t want to! I’m so ashamed!” She bit her lip and shook her head to keep the tears back.

Daniel said: “Tessa!” and coming round, tried clumsily to take her hands. She pushed him away with an inarticulate cry and rushed from the room with her hands over her face. Complete silence ensued for a moment. Maud gathered her wits together and quietly accepted the situation.

“Tessa hasn’t been herself since the baby died,” she said. “Go to her, Daniel. And, Daniel — coax her to talk to you.” Daniel went, looking bewildered.

Charles said tentatively: “A good bust-up once in a while is the very best thing for a family. Clears the air.” And Euphemia whispered to Fanny: “I’ve been thinking for some time that the child has been going through a religious crisis of some sort.” Fanny exclaimed: “Rubbish!” And Pen snorted derisively.

Tessa had flung herself on a chesterfield in the drawing room. Dan’s tousled head peered over the back of the sofa before the fire like a startled deer from a covert, and he saw a woman with her face buried in the cushions — crying. What ought he to do? If he stole away she might see him, and dimly he felt that that would never do. Then Uncle Daniel came into the room. Too late to go now.

Daniel sat on the couch beside her. For a long time she would neither answer him nor move, except to shake his hand from her shoulder.

Daniel said miserably: “When I said that, I didn’t mean us . I wasn’t thinking of us.”

Tessa sat up at last. “Oh, Daniel. This is a miserable life we lead!”

There was fear in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Tessa.”

“Why are we like this together?”

Daniel gave a mirthless laugh. “I am old, Tessa; you are young.”

“No! It isn’t that. But you are so stiff and cold and unnatural with me. It freezes me.”

Daniel began to stride up and down. Several times he began to speak, but each time he stopped, defeated. “If —” he said at last “— if you want — I mean, if I don’t — if I can’t make you happy, you could — sometimes I think the devil is between us, Tessa!”

“I don’t want a divorce, Daniel. But I want to feel alive. Life’s passing, and I feel as if I’d never truly lived it.… Make me feel alive, Daniel!”

He came to her, put his hand awkwardly on her shoulder, then removed it, feeling her muscles tense against him. “Tessa, why must we? You know the sort of torment this leads us to.”

“Put your hands on my shoulders again, Daniel. Please.”

He did as she asked. She was trembling.

“Now say you love me, Daniel.”

He tried to utter the simple sentence, but he could not. What he felt he could not utter — no, not if his life were to depend upon it.… And at times like these, the tension rising, like a sudden demon out of nothing, would unfurl to their minds and nerves a mortal hell divided between them.

“If only —” began Daniel, but he did not finish the phrase. But both of them knew what he meant: if only, while she was with child, Tessa had been quiet and hadn’t gadded about and played games. Daniel said heavily: “The doctor says there must never be another. It might mean —”

“I’m willing! I don’t care!”

She fingered the lapel of his coat and dropped her eyes. “Daniel. Other people —” She stopped.

“I know, my dear. But it wouldn’t be right. It isn’t right. We’ve talked about that before, over and over again. It wouldn’t be right.”

Presently, they went slowly out of the room together, and a sorely perplexed and abashed boy stood up. His mind was in a turmoil. He did not completely understand what he had heard, but he understood enough to be frightened. Was this what it was like to be grown up? he wondered. He felt obscurely that he was looking for the first time into a fearful world.… He began to jingle some loose cartridges in his coat pocket. He did not want to think of it. “Tomorrow I’ll get up at dawn and set up a target against the escarpment. Two bulls and four inners last time; not bad!”

III

On the way to the garden Dan stopped, as usual, to stare at the portrait of Great-Great-Grandmother Burnet which stood in a panel of the dining room beside that of her husband, General Sir Murdo Burnet. Sir Murdo had a hooked nose, a smoky look, and a face that always reminded Dan of the graven image in Joanna’s coloured Bible. Uncle Charles always called him Sir Tradition Gruff, and he might have been Dan’s own Uncle Murdo.

But it was Sir Rae’s lady that teased the boy’s imagination. She was dressed in flowing Gainsborough silks, as befitted a general’s lady of the eighteenth century, but the artist — perhaps with intentional irony — had left out of the picture the usual picture hat and shepherdess crook; instead, he had painted her with uncovered head, and in her blue-black hair above one ear was thrust a flower — not an English rose but some vivid flower of the south. She was dark and beautiful and strange, and out of her frame she stared not at her descendants, the most British Burnets, but beyond them — at what?

Charles Burnet came into the dining room and followed the boy’s glance. “The mysterious Lady Burnet,” thought Charles. “And worth looking at, too. Fifty devils in her eyes, and in her body the sway of an angel — no peace there.… But let the boy find out all that for himself.”

“Well, Dan, what do you think of your great-grandmother ?”

“She has a strange look in her eyes, hasn’t she?”

“Spells and incantations, my lad. Haven’t they told you about her?”

“Not much.”

“Want to know?”

“Yes. I bet there’s a lot to know.”

“Very discerning of you. I dare say there is, too, and I wish I knew it.… Would you say she was an aristocrat?”

“No-o — I see what you mean. She looks as if she didn’t care a hang for people.”

“Not much for people and less for their things , Dan. Her name was Faa and she belonged to a very special sort of aristocracy, the aristocracy of poverty and freedom.”

“Faa is Mother’s second name.”

“Quite. The Burnets have always been proud of her. She was a gipsy, Dan, a full-blooded Romany rawnie. What d’you think of that?”

Dan stared at his gipsy ancestor.

“It’s a fact. It’s the family skeleton — though we’re secretly proud of it — that her grandfather was hanged for theft in the seventeen-thirties at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh.”

“It must have been strange to be married to a gipsy. I wonder what she was like. Did she have children and was she happy, I wonder?”