Post of Honour Read Online Free PDF

Meg saw her and talked to her from time to time, but Meg did not join the crusade to tame her; she alone, with the single exception of Ikey, understood what freedom of movement meant to the only true gypsy in the family and would do nothing to threaten it.
    Two or three days after the dispute about Simon, Ikey set out across the woods on foot in the dusk of a dry autumn day. He did not hurry for he was depressed at not having had the courage to tell her that he would be gone in the morning, this time for at least three years. He knew that she took little heed of time and that even if he told her the truth she would not be much concerned but the finality of the occasion weighted on his mind nevertheless. It was almost dark when he threaded his way through the rhododendrons but she heard twigs crackle under his feet and lit a candle to guide him to the screen of the gorse at the mouth of the cave. He was a long time coming up and the kettle, which had been simmering, was boiling when he reached her little house.
    ‘Will ’ee tak’ tea now?’ she said, as though she had been a polite hostess welcoming a guest and he said he would and squatted on a truss of bracken, balancing himself on his heels. Sitting in that posture, with the candlelight flickering over his dark hair and strong features he looked a little like an Arab pondering a purchase and she said, handing him tea, ‘Youm sad, Ikey boy; be ’ee off outalong tomorrow?’ He said this was so and that he would be outalong much longer than usual for they were sending him across the sea. This did not frighten her but it must have astonished her for she uttered the low hissing sound she used to express surprise.
    ‘Across the sea?’ she repeated. ‘Baint ’ee scared?’
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘I baint scared but I’m mumpish, mumpish to be leavin’ ’ee so long.’
    ‘Aw giddon,’ she said, carelessly, ‘you’ll be back zoon enough, dornee mope along o’ that!’ and she sidled up to him and tweaked his ear. He seized her then with an urgency he had never used, not even when he was drunk on his mother’s hedgerow wine, throwing her across his knees and covering her face with kisses so that she laughed and pretended to resist and they rolled sideways into the bracken, their shadows dancing a crazy pattern on the wall. Then, breathlessly, she freed herself and said, ‘Wait on, boy! Dornee rush zo! Tiz dark now, so why dornee stay the night zince youm going? Tiz mild too and us’ll be snug if I mends the fire!’
    He said, for once not using the brogue, ‘I can’t stay, Hazel; it’s my last night and they’ll expect me to dinner,’ but he made no effort to go and she was puzzled by his sudden listlessness. ‘I don’t like leaving you and that’s a fact,’ he added and she smiled for he had never previously committed himself so deeply, ‘I don’t like to think what might happen to you up here alone with me thousands of miles away. Dammit, you can’t even read a letter I could write! Why the devil won’t you go and live in the Dell, at least until I get back again?’
    He had suggested this many times, just as he had urged her to return to Miss Willoughby’s school and learn to read and write, but tonight she saw that he meant it and his sudden concern baffled her.
    ‘Now whyfore should harm come to me up yer?’ she demanded. ‘ ’Er never has, has ’er?’
    ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘it never has, and I suppose you can look after yourself for if you can’t, who can?’
    ‘I likes it yer,’ she said, doggedly, ‘so yer I stay ’till I dies!’
    ‘ Why do you like it so much, Hazel? Tell me, if you can.’
    ‘Because I can zee what goes on,’ she said, but then he saw that she was teasing him and that this was not the real reason, and said, ‘That isn’t why! I don’t mind about you being here by day, it’s sleeping out that matters.’
    ‘Aye,’ she said, now looking at him slyly, ‘but mebbe I stay on because ’o