01.13.08
Tom Gippo
Glyn squinted and saw, even at that distance, the shabbiness of the riders. “They are not of us?” he asked uneasily.
“No by God. I thought them gone, but back they are, may the saints preserve us. ”
“Bad men, Dada?”
“The worst. Irish.”
“From over the sea?”
“Under it I am thinking. Gypsies…rogues…vagabonds. Cheat Jesus Christ himself and smile while they are doing it. Undercutting good Welsh, dayworkers they are, watching the old clock go round. With us payment by sweat of the brow, slate off the mountain and shares all round, but they are trouble, boy. Bad trouble.”
The Irishmen were obviously waiting for Geriant, their horses nosing the ground and looking in dire need of any nourishment they could forage. The tallest of the three, gaunt and so thin Glyn expected to hear his bones creak, was dressed in a frock coat that had seen better days, a battered top hat with a goose feather and fine boots of patent leather ridiculously out of place. He was the only one who sat a saddle and he was clearly the leader. One clutched an ancient banjo with multi-coloured ribbons, his face not unlike a clown, with ears pointed as a pixie, cheeks glowing like a winter fire and a mop of sandy hair that had receded in the middle leaving a tuft each side of his head.
The leader doffed his hat in a mocking sweep and the clown struck his banjo wildy in a discordant salute. “What have we here, me lads? A boy you’ve got for fetchin’ your tea, eh, Owen?”
“No business of yours, Tom Gippo.” snapped Geriant, pushing past, prickly as a hedgehog.
“Now is that nice?” grinned the banjo man. “Only being neighbourly. Isn’t that so Thomas?”
“Words out of me mough, banjo.” said the leader.
The third man, older than the others, with half open eyes and a ravaged grey face beneath an askew bowler, crouched over his horse’s neck with the reek of stale whiskey on his breath. “Late today, Welshman.” he grated. “Not let you go, that Megan of yours? Fiery they are, Welsh women, fiery. And legs…break the back of a man.”
Geriant whirled round. “Bide your tongue, Paddy. Wash out that foreign mouth you are cursed with. Carbloic you will be needing.”
Tom Gippo gave a sickly smile. “Shirt on now. Only foolin’ we are, Owen.” The smile went as quickly as it came. “Time enough for serious things.”
“I was thinking you gone from here.” growled Geriant.
“Help you’ll be needin’.” said Gippo meaningfully. “All that slate. How could we go back to the land of the little people now, knowin’ these poor hands could be helpin’ when it’s help you’ll be needin’.”
Banjo leaned over to Glyn, almost falling off. “And what might your name be, me bucko?”
Geriant pulled his son roughly to him as though he had seen a snake. “Keep away from him. Do you hear me now?”
Banjo threw a protective hand. “All right, all right. Just a friendly word. No harm meant.” He offered his banjo to Glyn as though trying to sell it. “Like this lad?”
Glyn looked apprehensively at his Father, then the instrument.
“Been in my family for generations it has. Handed down from the prince of Donegal himself. How’d you like to play it? Bet you would, eh? Show you how, I could that.”
Geriant gave him a look fit to draw teeth. “Away I said.” Cold as ice and a heat between them.
Gippo laughed, but without humour. “On our way, lads.” he cried. “There’s gold a-waitin’.”
With a digging of heels, clicking sounds all round, and much bumping up and down, they finally found a flicker of life in their bony mounts and ambled off with the dignity of impoverished royalty. Banjo called back over his shoulder: “Remember, whatever-your-name-is, lessons any time.”
Geriant spat his disgust into their hoof prints and tightened his hold on his pack. “May they rot in hell. Enough to start a war that lot, and quick with their bullets.”
They went on their way, with greater urgency now, as though the Irish were indeed beating them to something….
Image “The gypsy camp” by Elizabeth Eden, Interpretation of Vincent van Gogh.
