I had another dream too. Not one which woke me screaming, but one which made me long with a great loneliness for the mother that Dandy and I had lost so young. I had somehow got her muddled in my mind with the story Jack had told us of the loss of his mother – of her calling and calling as the wagon went away from her down the road. I certainly knew that my mother had not run after any wagon. She was too ill, poor woman, to run after anything. The memories I had of her were of her lying in the bunk with her mass of black hair, Dandy’s thick black hair, spread out on the pillow all around her, saying to Da in an anxious, fretting voice, ‘You will burn everything when I die, won’t you? Everything. All my dresses and all my goods? It is the way of my people. I need to know you will burn everything.’

He had promised yes. But she had known, and he had known, and even little Dandy and I had known that he would not complete the ceremonies and bury her as a Romany woman should be treated. He took her body off on a handcart and tossed it in the open hole which served as a pauper’s grave. Then he sold her clothes, he did not burn them as he promised. He burned a few rags in an awkward shame-faced way, just things he could not sell. And he tried to tell Dandy and me, who were watching him wide-eyed, that he was keeping his promise to our dead mother. He was a liar through and through. The only promise he kept was to give me my string and gold clasps. And he would have had that off me if he could.

But it was not that death that I remembered. That was not the mother I grieved for in my dream. I dreamed of a thunderstorm, high overhead, a night when no one who could close shutters would venture out. But out in the wind and the rain was a woman. The rain was sluicing down on her head, her feet were cut in many places from the sharp flints in the chalk soil and she limped like a beggar come new to the trade. The pain in her feet was very bad. But she was crying not for that pain but because she had a baby under her arm and she was taking it to the river to throw it away like an in-bred whelp which should be drowned. But the little baby was so warm beneath her arm, hidden from the storm by her cape. And she loved it so dearly she did not know how she could let it go, into the cold water, away into the flood. As she stumbled and sobbed she could feel it nuzzling gently into her armpit, trustingly.

Then the dream melted as dreams will and suddenly there was a wagon, like the one I live in now, like all the wagons I have lived in all my life. And a woman leaning down from the scat by the driver and reaching out for the baby, and taking the baby without a word.

And then – and this is the moment where I suppose the dreams become muddled with Robert Gower’s wife calling after him on the road – then the wagon moved off and the woman was left behind. In one part of her heart she was glad that the child was sent away, off the land, away from her home. And in another part she longed for her child with such a passion that she could not stop herself from running, running on her bleeding feet after the rocking wagon, and calling out, though the wind ripped her words away: ‘Her name is Sarah! Sarah…’

She called some more, but the wind whipped her words away and the woman on the box did not turn her head. And I awoke, in the early, cold grey light, with tears pouring down my cheeks as if I was grieving for a mother who had loved me and given me away; sent me away because there was no safe place for me in my home.

15

The dreams kept waking me at night, and even when I slept I woke weary. Robert looked at me askance around the stem of his pipe and asked if I were sickening. I said, ‘No,’ but I felt tired to my very bones.

I was sleeping poorly, and we were in counties where they watched for their game and we were eating sparingly. Bread, cheese and bacon; but no rich gamey stews. I was working hard. Harder than I had ever worked for my da. At least my da had taken the odd day, sometimes days at a time, when he had done no work at all, disappearing to drink and gamble, and coming home reeling and worthless. With Robert we worked in a steady rhythm of work and moving, and there was nothing else.

Katie kept going, working and practice, doing her act. But she was ready to drop after the last show of an evening. Especially if we were working in a barn and she was doing three shows a day. She would roll into her bunk as soon as she had stripped her costume off. I often saw the two of them, her and Dandy, sleeping naked under the blankets, with their fine flyers’ cloaks spread out over their bunks, when they had been too weary to fold them and put them in the chest. Dandy was exhausted. She had to order the two of them into the rigging for extra practice when the tricks went badly, she had to watch the act, not just as a performer but as a trainer too. And she had to work and work at her own skill. Long after Katie and Jack had dropped down, cursing with weariness into the nets, Dandy would be up there throwing somersaults to an empty trapeze, falling into the net, and going heel-toe, heel-toe, up the ladder to go through the trick again.

I would be working the horses, or fetching them hay and water for the night, and I would go into the barn when I heard the twang of the catch-net and ask Dandy to leave her practice and come to bed. Sometimes I brought her a cup of mulled ale and she would drop from the net and drink it, sitting on one of the benches.

‘Shouldn’t eat nor drink in the ring,’ she said to me once, her face wreathed in steam from the hot ale.

‘Shouldn’t swear either, and all of us do,’ I replied unrepentant. ‘Now you go to bed, Dandy. We’ve another three shows to do tomorrow, you’ll be tired out.’

She yawned and stretched herself. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘You coming?’

I shook my head, though I ached for sleep. ‘I’ve got to clean the harness,’ I said. ‘It’s getting too dirty. I’ll not be long.’

She went without a backward glance, and when I came to the wagon two hours later she and Katie were fast asleep; Dandy on her back, her hair a rumpled black mass on the pillow.

I crept into my own bunk and gathered the blankets around my shoulders in their comforting warmth. But as soon as I shut my eyes I started dreaming again. I would dream I was the red-headed girl and the land was turning against me. I would watch the fields grow ripe and yet know an absolute fear of loss clutch cold at me. I would dream I was the woman who had been out in the storm and I would ache for the loss of the baby whose name was Sarah. Then I would hear her anguished call, and sometimes I would sit bolt upright in my bed, cracking my forehead on the roof of the wagon, as if I were trying to answer her.

In the morning I would be heavy-eyed and pasty-faced. But still there would be the horses to train and the ponies to work. The hay and the water to take around, the tack to be checked, and every single one of the twelve animals to wash and groom.

Rea helped. But Robert was training him for rosinback riding and he was tired and bruised from his falls. Jack helped. But he was training on the trapeze and helping Rea learn to stand. Most of the work fell to me. I could not ask Katie for help; she was afraid of Snow and Sea and would only groom the little ponies. I would not ask Dandy. I always wanted her to rest.

Our quietest time was around noon. We ate early, and Katie and Dandy did most of the cooking. Robert ordered Jack and Rea to clear up the plates and wash them. Sometimes we would pile back into our bunks and sleep the early afternoon hours away. Sometimes, as it grew warmer, we would find our way to the nearest river or lake – going three-up on Morris or Bluebell – and spend an hour splashing in the cool water. One time, when we were playing in a field outside a little fishing village called Selsey in west Sussex, we all five of us went down to the sea: Jack and Rea on Snow, Dandy, Katie and me on Sea. We rode them along the pebbles of the beach down to the hard sand at the water’s edge and then urged them in. Sea jinked and fretted at the little waves and Katie cried to be let off. Dandy and I let her go and Dandy held tight around my waist while I urged Sea into the water. The waves came up to his knees and I still pressed him on until he made a little leap deeper into the sea and he was swimming with great heaving magical lunges. Dandy and I clung to his mane, swam beside him, letting his great heaving movement tug us through the water, buffeted by the waves. Jack and Rea were shouting with delight, trying to stay on Snow, and Katie lost her fear and played at the water’s edge. We five became children again for that little time, playing as we had never been allowed to play in our overworked childhoods. But then Jack looked at the sun and nodded at me.

‘Time to head back,’ he said. The others wanted to stay for longer under the warm sun, by the washing sea, but Jack and I carried our way against them.

‘I’ve got to get these two clean,’ I said ruefully, looking at Sea’s coat which was matted with salt and his mane which was drying in tangles.

‘I’ll help,’ Dandy promised lightly. ‘I’ll help and then we can all stay longer!’

‘No,’ I said, and Jack nodded his agreement with me.

‘Come on,’ he said, vaulting up on to Snow. ‘Time to get back.’

Katie rode home between Jack and Rea. Dandy and I came along behind, slowly, on Sea.

It was only mid-April, but warm as Maytime. The sun was hot on our heads.

‘You named him well when you called him Sea,’ Dandy said sleepily. ‘Why did you call him that, Merry?’

She was riding before me and I felt happy and easy with her in my arms.

‘Because of Wide,’ I said. ‘I felt that I had seen him before at Wide and that he had a name there like Sea – something. I don’t know what. So I called him Sea.’

‘Oh, Wide!’ she said lazily. ‘D’you still think of it, Merry? I thought it only gave you nightmares now.’

‘I do,’ I said. The old longing was still calling me. ‘I think I always will,’ I said.

Dandy leaned back against me and dozed, and when I kissed her hair, softly not to wake her, I tasted salt from the sea.

She stirred and glanced back over her shoulder at me, her dark eyes smiling. ‘I’ve got him at last,’ she confided.

‘Who?’ I asked. I was stupid with my usual weariness and with the dizzy dancing feeling behind my eyes from being out in the bright sunlight and watching the sparkle on the waves. I was aching all over from my swimming and I knew I would be stiff tomorrow. I was dozing like Dandy had been. I did not think what she was saying.

‘Got who?’ I asked.

Dandy nodded her tousled head towards the other horse which was ahead of us. Just a little way ahead, turning into the gate where the wagons were pitched and the little ponies hobbled.

‘Jack,’ she said. Her voice was a purr of satisfaction. ‘I’ve got him so that he won’t escape me, and the show will be half ours as I promised.’

‘Dandy, what have you done?’ I exclaimed, struggling to wake and understand what she was saying; but Sea followed Snow into the field and Robert Gower was tumbling out of his wagon, his face flushed and his eyes bright.

‘Where the hell have you been!’ Robert exclaimed. ‘Meridon Cox, you’re going to have to work like a sugar-island slave to get these horses ready for tonight! And tonight of all nights! Don’t you bodge it, m’girl. Either the first or the second show there’s a man coming specially to see us! I had a letter after you’d all gone jauntering off! If it’d come before you left I’d have kept you back.’

‘What man?’ Dandy asked.

Robert beamed at her. ‘Never you mind, little Miss Nosey,’ he said. ‘Just you remember that he’s coming to either the first or the second show. He could make my fortune too if he likes what he sees.’ He nodded at all of us. ‘If he makes me an offer for the show you’ll all see the benefit of it,’ he said. ‘A London season! A proper-built ring. Quality audience. Two shows a day but never out of doors! No more travelling! No end to what we could do!’

He broke off and looked around at us. ‘My God, you look like a camp of gypsies!’ he said irritably. ‘Meridon! Get to work on those horses! Rea! Help her! Jack! Check the rigging and then come and see what Merry needs doing.’

He rounded on Katie and Dandy. ‘You two are supposed to be flying angels! Belles of the ball!’ he said angrily. ‘You look like a pair of sluttish hedge-hoppers! Get under the tap both of you, and wash and braid your hair. Check your costumes! I want you to look absolutely your best.’