The Sacrifice Stone by Elizabeth Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

again, she said pleasantly, ‘ That’s all right, then.’
    And went off to find Adam.
    *
    They went to the Place du Forum for the cold beer; Van Gogh’s Café de Nuit was closed, presumably saving itself for later, and they found a table in the middle of the square, in the shade of trees.
    She was aware of feeling tense, and was cross that, even though she should surely have grown out of it, she still allowed herself to be affected by Joe’s moods. He was glaring down at his innocuous glass of beer as if analysing it for the presence of hemlock.
    ‘Isn’t this jolly?’ Adam remarked. She looked up and caught his eye: he seemed to be amused about something.
    ‘It’s wonderful,’ she said firmly. Lifting her glass, she touched it to his. ‘Cheers.’
    ‘Cheers.’
    Joe didn’t say anything.
    ‘Are you here on holiday, Adam?’ Okay, she thought, it’s as hackneyed an opening as asking him if he comes here often, but it’s the best I can do.
    ‘Not entirely — I’m working too.’
    ‘What at?’
    ‘I’ve been commissioned by the Beeb to make a film about the great gipsy routes from central Europe down to the Mediterranean. About the whole gitan culture, in fact, and how their folklore, music and dances spread down into the south.’
    ‘They came here? To Provence?’ It seemed an unlikely journey for middle European gipsies.
    ‘They still do. I was down at Aigues Mortes yesterday, and the plain between the town and the sea was covered in gipsy caravans. There were campfires going, and a gorgeous smell of cooking, and a black-haired girl in a long flounced skirt read my palm for a few pieces of silver — well, for fifty francs. The caravans were great flash ones pulled by cars, admittedly, but the people are the descendants of those who made the trip centuries ago. Or so they claim.’
    ‘You could have stayed in England and studied gipsies,’ Joe said. ‘A group of them were turfed out of some woods near us last winter, and the filth they left is still there, rotting into the ground.’
    ‘You may be confusing true gipsies with diddicoys,’ Adam replied. ‘The sort of caravan-dwellers who muck up perfectly good woodland and leave a trail of old prams and bits of Morris Minor chassis are as much an object of disdain to the true Romanies as they are to you. Probably more so, as nobody keeps saying that you and the diddicoys belong to the same group of people.’
    Thirty-fifteen, Beth thought, suppressing a smile. Joe made a sound like a snort, but, to his credit, said, ‘How do you define a true Romany, then?’
    ‘Romanies are one of a small group of principal families, the others, being the Spanish gipsies — the name gitan really applies to them — Bohemians and Tziganes, to which we should add the English gipsies. “Romany” has come to be a blanket term for all of them — it was actually first coined by George Borrow to apply to the gipsies who arrived in England in the sixteenth century, and it derived from their own name for themselves, which was Rom, or Romni in the feminine. They themselves called their language Romani.’
    ‘And they all came from central Europe?’ Beth asked.
    ‘It’s believed they were originally low-caste Indians who spread via Persia to Turkey, Greece, Hungary, the Balkans, and eventually right across to Germany, France and Spain. Because they were dark, it was thought at one time they came from Egypt, hence Gypcians, or gipsies.’
    Beth thought how bizarre it was, to be sitting in a café in Arles listening to a pocket lecture on the culture of the gipsies. Her imagination stimulated, she asked, ‘Why did they leave India in the first place?’
    Adam shrugged. ‘Why does any people leave their homeland? Persecution, famine, overcrowding? It’s too long ago to say with any certainty.’
    ‘What I was really wondering was why did they leave and not settle somewhere else.’
    ‘Why did they become travellers, you mean?’
    ‘Yes. If persecution or