After the Mourning by Barbara Nadel

considered Lily and her people to be almost at one with God Almighty. I wondered, too, whether this action by the MPs was just one of many. After all, I had never found out who Lily had been talking to when she’d run away crying from someone when I’d been up at Eagle Pond. Maybe Mansard, Williams or another of their blokes had pressed her on the subject of Stojka. Although why they would think she might know something I couldn’t imagine. Lily and her folks were – except Betty and Edward, who were Rumanians – English Gypsies, as far as I knew. They certainly weren’t German. There was no reason, Gypsy blood aside, why they should know this Stojka chap at all.
    ‘So how was it up at the camp when you left?’ I asked Hannah. ‘Are the MPs still up there?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Last me and Bella saw, they were watching the Gyppos put their tents back up again. It was quiet, but not a good atmosphere. I got the feeling the coppers won’t move now.’
    ‘They’re between the Gypsies and the people?’
    ‘Yes.’
    I shook my head in despair. ‘Well, that’s all very good until Lily starts having her visions again,’ I said. ‘If the MPs try to keep them back from “their” Virgin there’ll be hell to pay. There’s some right hard nuts up there, and what with the MPs having rifles . . .’ I sighed. ‘As Ernie Sutton said to me only yesterday, someone, he thinks a clergyman, needs to talk to the Gypsies and find out what’s really going on – if that’s possible, of course.’
    ‘Gyppos are close.’
    ‘Yes, I know, but if the MPs are putting pressure on them they might welcome some help. They might need it. I think I’ll speak to Ernie.’
    There was a great deal of doubt in Hannah’s eyes, but I picked up the telephone receiver to see whether I had a line or not and when I found I had, I called the Reverend Ernie Sutton without further ado. In spite of my tiredness, just one hour later I found myself driving Ernie and Hannah slowly through the dusky blacked-out streets, over to Eagle Pond and the unusually subdued Gypsy camp.
    ‘We don’t know anything about this man you speak of,’ Mr Lee said, in answer to my question about Martin Stojka. ‘These soldiers here,’ he pointed to the group of MPs on the perimeter of the camp, ‘they just come and tear our tents down.’
    ‘Because they’re looking for Martin Stojka, yes,’ I replied. ‘He’s a German Gypsy. Didn’t Captain Mansard ask you about him?’
    ‘No.’ Mr Lee turned his face away from me as he spoke. ‘No one said nothing, just smashed up the camp.’
    I noticed that Lily’s tent, unlike the others, was still flattened out on the damp ground. ‘Where’s Lily?’
    The Gypsy shrugged.
    ‘And the Head?’
    ‘Alive.’ Then, turning to Ernie, he said, ‘Would you like a beer, Reverend? We can have no fire because of the German aeroplanes, but if you want to come into my tent you will be welcome. The season grows cold at night now.’
    Ernie smiled. ‘Yes, thank you.’ As we followed Mr Lee towards his tent, he said, ‘Maybe he’ll talk when he’s not being watched.’
    ‘Maybe,’ I agreed, as I glanced at the many Military Police who surrounded the camp. Only with great reluctance had they allowed Ernie and me in to see the Gypsies. Ernie’s position as a vicar had secured it for us in the end. But they hadn’t allowed Hannah to enter and she was, I knew, waiting with the ‘faithful’, anxious to get back to her home and ‘work’.
    Mr Lee placed a bottle of Mackeson in Ernie’s hands and led us into his tent, which, like his daughter’s, was damp and covered with strange pieces of animal bone and feather. Before we had a chance to sit down he said, ‘As you are men who work with life and death, I can tell you things.’
    Ernie and I positioned ourselves on a long pile of rags.
    ‘Yes, I know the military men are looking for a Romany from Germany,’ Mr Lee said, as he rolled and lit a short, dark