The Wild Cry of Love Read online

  Valda did not like to appear inquisitive by asking what they were about to eat, but, when she tasted it, she realised it was chicken and wondered which farm it had come from.

  Indeed it might have been the cockerel she had given the Vataf yesterday.

  It was, however, cooked in a way she had never tasted before and, as if she realised what she was thinking, the Phuri Dai explained,

  “The gypsies use a great many herbs in cooking and there are nettles in this dish besides vegetables which grow wild and of course mushrooms.”

  “What happens when you cannot get a chicken or even a rabbit?” Valda asked.

  The Vataf smiled.

  “Then we have to find a niglo,” he answered.

  Valda knew that in English this meant a hedgehog and she remembered she had been told that it was a very popular dish amongst the gypsies and always eaten on festive occasions.

  She was glad, however, that they were not eating one tonight.

  She had the feeling that she did not wish to eat hedgehog, even though living in France she had often watched people enjoying delicacies such as frogs legs and snails, which were unusual to an English menu.

  There was no bread with the chicken stew, but a maize cake perfumed with seeds and curry leaves.

  “The ankruste is particularly enjoyed amongst the Kalderash,” the Phuri Dal explained.

  Valda found it quite palatable, although she thought that she would have preferred the ordinary bread she was used to.

  She was not offered wine with the meal as she had expected, but instead the food was accompanied by cups of tea.

  Several times during the journey one of the younger gypsies had come to the Phuri Dai’s caravan to bring her a cup of boiling hot tea and Valda noticed the way the gypsies drank was to pour it out little by little into the saucer and lap it up.

  All the day they had been travelling, the Phuri Dal had been smoking her pipe, but she had not used tobacco but instead a mixture of herbs and dried leaves ground up together.

  It had a very pleasant smell, but, when the Phuri Dai asked Valda if she would like to smoke, she shook her head.

  “You are right, mademoiselle,” the Phuri Dal said, “women should not smell of smoke. It’s a bad habit, but one I enjoy!”

  She laughed as she went on,

  “We all have our bad habits, otherwise life would be very dull.”

  “I cannot believe you ever find it dull,” Valda said. “It is we who are shut up in houses as if in cages who have a dull existence.”

  Her face had been very expressive as she spoke and after a moment the Phuri Dai asked,

  “Why are you running away?”

  “Because my stepfather wishes me to be married in the French manner to a man I have never seen, simply because socially it would be advantageous to us both.”

  There was silence after she had spoken.

  The Phuri Dai was sitting staring ahead at the road, her hands holding the reins loosely, the horses moving much as they wished to do.

  “It is wrong!” Valda went on. “Wrong at any rate as far as I am concerned! I refuse to marry a man I do not love!” “And suppose you never find one?” the Phuri Dal asked. “Then perhaps it would be better not to marry at all!” The old woman turned her face to look at Valda and smiled.

  “There is no need for you to worry, mademoiselle. You’ll find a man who is your mate because that is nature’s way. Look at the ducks, the storks, the partridges, the gulls and the egrets. At this time of year the males have found their females and are building their nests. What is natural for them is natural for us!”

  “That is what I feel,” Valda answered.

  She thought of the owls that had hooted last night as she had been making up her mind what she must do.

  “Life is never easy,” the Phuri Dai went on. “We have to fight for what we want, perhaps suffer, but in the end it is worthwhile.”

  “You are saying exactly what I want to hear,” Valda said. “To accept tamely what is suggested would, to my mind, be cowardly, besides being a certain path to unhappiness.”

  “What you are seeking is love,” the Phuri Dai said. “That is what all women want, the love of a man who has sought you out because you are his woman and he is your man.”

  Valda drew in her breath.

  “Yes. That is what I want. That is what I seek.”

  “Then you’ll find it.” “Are you sure of that?”

  “I’m sure!” the Phuri Dai replied.

  Valda wondered whether she should ask the old woman to read her future in the cards and perhaps look at her palm, but even as she thought it the Phuri Dai showed that she knew her thoughts by saying,

  “It’s best not to know one’s fate. If you are uncertain or afraid it can give you confidence. But if you have faith in yourself, you know without sorcery that your life will be full and you can attract to yourself what you are prepared to give.”

  Valda pondered on this for some time, then she said, “You mean if I am prepared to give love I shall receive it?”

  “That is the law of nature,” the Phuri Dai answered. “Each gives, each receives. Only for those who don’t give is there an empty heart, an empty soul.”

  “I understand,” Valda murmured.

  She felt a little warmth inside her, because the Phuri Dai had put into words and confirmed what she felt herself.

  ‘I am setting out on my own crusade,’ she thought, ‘in search of love, in search of the fullness of life.’

  She turned shining eyes towards the Phuri Dal.

  “I am so glad I was brave enough to come.”

  “We all need courage,” the Gypsy answered. “Without it we would sink into insignificance and be lost.”

  Valda thought how brave the gypsies had been through centuries of persecution.

  Despite all efforts to stamp them out, to imprison them, to drive them from country to country, they had survived and remained a formidable people with their own customs, their own crafts and even their own religion.

  What was more they were, despite what people said about them, far more moral than most of those who abused them.

  Valda had known when she had asked the gypsies if she could travel with them that she would have nothing to fear from the gypsy men.

  For one thing she was a gadje and therefore forbidden to them. For another the gypsies married very young and there was no question of a man being unfaithful to his wife or his wife to him.

  There were very strict penalties imposed by the elders or the leader of a tribe on any gypsy who behaved immorally or brought discredit to his tribe.

  They might steal and they certainly poached because a gypsy believed that God had given the wild creatures to those who needed them, but a gypsy seldom committed murder and crimes against women were not to be found imputed to them in any police records.

  “Your people have great courage!” Valda said aloud. “And we have needed it,” the Phuri Dai said simply.

  As she spoke, Valda remembered that in the previous century the gypsies in the Basque country were obliged to wear a red helmet marked with a goat’s foot and sentenced to go barefoot.

  Even those who were Catholics had a segregated place reserved for them in the Churches where they had to take the Holy water with a stick.

  When the meal round the fire was finished, the gypsies began to sing a love song, which after a few minutes was accompanied on a violin skilfully played by a young gypsy boy of about sixteen years of age.

  “That is my grandson,” the Vataf said proudly. “He is a musician and he plays with his heart.”

  “Has he had lessons?” Valda asked.

  The Vataf shook his head.

  “It is born in him,” he said. “All gypsies love music and, when we get to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the girls will dance. They are very graceful.”

  The gypsy playing the violin was joined by another with a pipe, more women began to sing and now it was not so much a song as a rhythmic chant t
hat seemed somehow appropriate to the darkness around them and the stars overhead.

  Valda wondered what it would feel like to be here at this moment with a man who loved her.

  She could imagine nothing more romantic than to listen to the gypsy music and know that she was close to a man to whom she thrilled when she felt his touch.

  She felt it so vividly that her dream seemed almost like reality.

  Then the Phuri Dai rose from beside the fire, moving slowly and with difficulty because her leg hurt her.

  “It is time for bed,” she said, “and you, mademoiselle, must have a good sleep because we shall be on the road early again tomorrow morning.”

  “Then I, too, had better go to bed,” Valda said.

  She said goodnight both to the Vataf and to the Phuri Dai and climbed into her own caravan.

  It had been set alongside the Phuri Dai’s and they were both a little apart from the rest of the tribe.

  It was very simply furnished. There was a mattress on the floor and two blankets with which to cover her and a pillow with a linen cover on it.

  It was all very clean and smelt sweetly of herbs, a bunch of which was hanging from the ceiling.

  There was a curtain heavy as a blanket to draw over the front of the caravan and pretty cotton curtains for the little window high on one side. There were a few shelves from which everything had been removed while they were travelling.

  There was a wool mat on the floor and Valda found a basin and a pitcher of water had been placed inside for her.

  She knew this was a concession that would not have been made to the other gypsies who, if they washed, would use a stream or perhaps a pump.

  Valda took off her red skirt, her full petticoats and embroidered blouse. Then she hesitated before she removed her other garments.

  She was quite certain that the gypsies would not do so, but she told herself there was no reason why she should behave any differently from how she would at home.

  She put on her nightgown and slipped under the blankets to find the mattress surprisingly comfortable.

  Always at home she knelt beside her bed to say her prayers, but here she felt it would seem strange to kneel when her bed was flat on the floor, so she said her prayers lying down.

  They were very different from the conventional ones she usually used. Now she asked that she should be safe, unafraid and that she should not be discovered.

  ‘Help me, God,’ she prayed, ‘to prove to Beau-père that I am both sensible and competent to do what I wish to do. And help me to find a man who will love me and not want me just because I have money.’

  That, she knew as she said it, was more important than anything else.

  Even if a man said he loved her, how could she ever believe that he would have felt the same if she had been penniless and was not offered to him with her glittering fortune as an embellishment?

  ‘If Papa had had a son,’ she thought, ‘things would have been very different. Most of his money would have gone to my brother and I would have had just enough to be comfortable.’

  She thought it over and decided that when she married she would have a large family with lots of sons, but only a few daughters!

  Then, although she was half asleep, she laughed at herself.

  ‘I have first to find them a father!’

  She remembered the Phuri Dai’s words.

  “It is nature’s way that everyone should find their mate!”

  *

  The next morning was sunless and rather chill as they set off soon after dawn. The boiling hot tea, which Valda drank as the gypsies drank theirs because they were all in a hurry, from the saucer, made her feel warm and comfortable.

  She ate ankruste spread with butter as the Phuri Dai drove her caravan after the Vataf who led the way.

  As soon as they had left the Mas with its cultivated fields, they began to see shallow waters and grassland, which was a riot of daisies, clover, scarlet pimpernels, blue flags and wild gladioli.

  Where these stretches of grassland cattle had not been grazed too heavily by the cattle, there was mock privet with its dark, narrow, evergreen leaves gaining a foothold.

  Now Valda could see the first of the purple herons and the oystercatchers, besides the black-winged stilts, the elegant white egrets, golden plovers and various wading birds.

  “They are on their spring migration,” the Phuri Dai explained, following the direction of her eyes.

  “What I want to see are the pink flamingos,” Valda enthused.

  “You will see them further on,” the Phuri Dai answered. Valda kept looking over the shallow waters for what she knew would seem like a pink barrier, for in all France it is only in the Camargue that the pink flamingos breed.

  They journeyed on, not stopping to eat at midday although the gypsies brought the Phuri Dai and Valda the inevitable hot tea and maize cakes eaten with a kind of pate made from some unidentifiable animal.

  It was delicious, but Valda was afraid to ask what it was in case she was told it was hedgehog!

  Nevertheless she ate it hungrily and enjoyed the tea, the gypsies coming up the road several times to refill their cups.

  Now they saw ahead of them the village of Albaron and, when they had reached it, there suddenly was the real Camargue.

  There were its étangs, or lagoon-like expanses of water, its rugged salt rock and long savannah.

  “I think,” Valda exclaimed suddenly, “that I should leave you here. I am sure this is where I shall find the wild horses that I wish to photograph. Then, after you have had your Festival at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, I will, if I may, join up with you again.”

  She thought, although she was not certain, that the Phuri Dai was relieved at her decision.

  “It is over twenty miles to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer,” she said. “But if you wish to join us again I am sure there will be a carrier of some sort between Albaron and Saintes-Maries.”

  “I am sure there will,” Valda agreed. “So may I thank you, madame, for your kindness and will you accept the money I owe for being with you for two days?”

  She had drawn out the two hundred francs as she spoke, but the Phuri Dai waved them away.

  “There is no need for money to pass between friends,” she said. “You and your family befriend my people and ask nothing in return. When you travel with us, you travel as one of us.”

  ‘Thank you,” Valda said. “You are very kind and I am grateful for your help.”

  “Take care of yourself, mademoiselle,” the Phuri Dai said. “I will pray for you to the Blessed Sara! I will pray that you will find what you seek and that you will be happy.”

  “Thank you very much,” Valda said again.

  The Phuri Dai drew her horses to a standstill and Valda stepped down.

  She walked back to the caravan behind and took from the Phuri Dai’s daughter her camera and bag.

  Again she expressed her thanks. As the cavalcade moved on, she stood watching them until the dust made her cough. Then she turned and walked along the road leading Eastwards.

  She knew from a map it ran along the top of the Étang de Vaccarès, the largest inland lagoon of the Camargue.

  Although she had enjoyed herself with the gypsies, there was something exciting in feeling that now she was completely on her own.

  She saw a herd of black Camargue cattle in the distance, but she was not particularly interested in them.

  There were a dozen varieties of wild duck on the Étang de Vaccarès and Valda recognised the sheldrake, widgeon, the diving pochard, tufted and pintail.

  There were also cranes and she could see the chestnut-coloured heads of the male teals bobbing in and out of the water revealing their broad green eye-patches as a weasel ran across the road in front of her.

  She walked on captivated by the display of nature in all its glory, until suddenly a flash of white attracted her away to her left.

  She stood still, drawing in her breath, then realised she had not been mistaken
.

  A number of the small white Camargue horses were grazing lazily on the sodden grasses, which were like islands surrounded by water only a few inches deep.

  Valda considered what she should do.

  The horses were some way away, but, as she watched, they appeared to be moving towards her. In fact she saw two other horses join them and she had the idea that they might move towards the still flat water of the Étang de Vaccarès, which was on the other side of the road.

  On the other hand they might gallop away and she might never have the chance of photographing such a large number again.

  Looking around her for a place to hide, she could only see some stumpy mock privet bushes on small islands of grass, dotted with patches of bulrushes and bright tamarisk.

  The tamarisk thrived, as Valda knew, only on the edges of lakes or ditches carrying fresh water and as it was May they were covered with pink blossom.

  Suddenly inspired, she thought that these might conceal the brilliance of her red skirt and the white of her blouse.

  Putting down the linen bag next to a bush at the side of the road, she took off her red leather shoes and pulled down her stockings, which she had worn out of modesty although they were out of keeping with her gypsy dress.

  She put them beside the bag and picked up her camera.

  She would have to wade towards the horses, in order to keep out of sight of them, behind the clumps of plants and shrubs if she was to get near enough for a photograph.

  She looked around and, seeing nobody in sight, pulled her skirt with its voluminous petticoats up to her knees and then stepped into the water.

  It was not as cold as she had expected, but warm from the hot sun and she guessed that it was a mixture of both salt and fresh water.

  The Kodak camera was not heavy to carry.

  Since the exposure was much quicker in this new model, Valda was sure that, unless the horses were galloping at a tremendous speed, she would be able to get a good picture of them.

  Certainly she was going to try! Once again she thought, if she could only have an exhibition in Paris of the snapshots she had taken in the Camargue, what a very persuasive answer it would be to her stepfather’s allegation that she had no saleable qualifications or skills.