“For the clock mender in Stallstead,” he said. Then, as the driver unfolded the doors, the man came right up into the tram. “This is Stallery South Gate,” he said loudly. “Any young persons applying for employment should alight here, please.”
I jumped up. So, to my dismay, did all the other kids. We all crowded towards the door and clattered down the steps into the road, every one of us, and the gatehouse seemed to soar above us. The tram clanged again and whined away along its tracks, leaving us to our fate.
“Follow me,” the man in the brown uniform said, and he turned towards the gate. It was a gateway big enough to have taken the tram, like a huge arched mouth in the towering face of the gatehouse, and it was slowly swinging open to let us through.
Everyone clustered forward then, and I was somehow at the back. My feet lagged. I couldn’t help myself. Behind me, across on the other side of the road, someone called out in a strong, cheerful voice, “Bye then. Thanks for the lift.”
I looked round to see a tall boy swing himself down from the middle caravan – I hadn’t noticed there were three before – and come striding across the road to join the rest of us.
Anyone less likely to climb out of a shabby, broken-down caravan was hard to imagine. He was beautifully dressed in a silk shirt, a blue linen jacket and impeccably creased fawn trousers, and his black hair was crisply cut in a way that I could see was expensive. He seemed older than the rest of us – I thought, fifteen at least – and the only gypsy things about him were the dark, dark eyes in his confident, good-looking face.
My heart sank at the sight of him. If anyone was going to get the job at Stallery, it would be this boy.
The gatekeeper came pushing past the boy and shook his fist at the gypsy encampment. “I warned you!” he shouted. “Clear off!”
Someone on the driving seat of the front caravan shouted back. “Sorry, guvnor! Just going now!”
“Then get going!” yelled the gatekeeper. “Go on. Hop it. Or else!”
Rather to my surprise, all five caravans moved off at once. I hadn’t realised there were so many and, for another thing, I had thought the grey horse was eating the hedge and not hitched up to any of them. I dimly remembered there was a cooking fire too, with an iron pot hanging over it. But I thought I must have been wrong about that when all six carts bumped down into the road, leaving empty grass behind, and set off clattering away in the direction of Stallstead. The white dog, which had been sniffing at the hedge some way down the road, came pelting after them and leapt up and down behind the last caravan. A thin brown arm came out of the back of this caravan and the dog was hauled inside with enormous scramblings. It looked as if the dog had been taken by surprise as much as I had.
The gatekeeper grunted and pushed back among us to the open gate. “Come on through,” he said.
We obediently shuffled forward between the walls of the gatehouse. At the exact moment that I was level with the gate, I felt the magical defences of Stallery cut through me like a buzz saw. It was only a thin line, luckily, but while I crossed it, it was like having my body taken over by a swarm of electric bees. I squeaked. The tall boy, walking beside me, made a small noise like “Oof!” I didn’t notice if any of the others felt it because almost at once we came through under the gatehouse into a huge vista of perfect parkland. We all made little murmurs of pleasure.
There was perfect green rolling lawn wherever you looked, with a ribbon of beautifully kept driveway looping through it among clumps of graceful trees. The greenness rose into hills here and there and the hills were either crowned with trees or they had little white pillared summerhouses on them. And it all went on and on, into the blue distance.
“Where’s the house?” one of the girls asked.
The gatekeeper laughed. “Couple of miles away. Start walking. When you come to the path that goes off to the right, take that and keep walking. When you can see the mansion, take the right-hand path again. Someone will meet you there and show you the rest of the way.”
“Aren’t you coming too then?” the girl asked.
“No,” said the man. “I stay with the gate. Off you go.”
We set off, trudging in a dubious little huddle along the drive, like a lost herd of sheep. We walked until the wall and the gate were out of sight behind two of the green hills, but there was still no sign of the mansion. A certain amount of sighing and shuffling began, particularly among the girls. They were all wearing the kind of shoes that hurt your feet just to look at them, and most of them had the latest fashion in dresses on too, which held their knees together and forced them to take little tripping steps. Some of the boys had come in good suits made of thick cloth. They were far too hot, and one boy who was wearing hand-stitched boots was hobbling worse than the girls.
“I’ve got a blister already,” one of the girls announced. “How much further is it?”
“Do you think it’s some kind of a test?” wondered the boy with the boots.
“Oh, it’s bound to be,” said the tall boy from the gypsy camp. “This drive is designed to lead us round in circles until only the fittest survive. That was a joke,” he added, as almost everyone let out a moan. “Why don’t we all take a rest?” His bright dark eyes travelled over our various plastic bags. “Why don’t we sit on this nice smooth grass and have a picnic?”
This suggestion caused instant dismay. “We can’t!” half of them cried out. “They’re expecting us!” And most of the rest said, “I can’t mess up my good clothes!”
The tall boy stood with his hands in his pockets surveying everyone’s hot, anxious faces. “If they want us that badly,” he said, in a testing kind of way, “they might have had the decency to send a car.”
“Ooh, they wouldn’t do that, not for domestic,” one of the girls said.
The tall boy nodded. “I suppose not.” I had the feeling that, up until then, this boy had not the least notion why we were all here. I could see him digesting the idea. “Still,” he said, “domestic or not, there’s nothing to stop people taking their shoes off and walking on this nice smooth grass, is there? There’s no one who could see.” Faces turned to him with longing. “Go on,” he said. “You can always put them on again when we sight the house.”
More than half of them took his advice. Girls plucked off shoes, boys unlaced tight boots. The tall boy sauntered behind with a pleased but slightly superior smile, watching them scamper barefoot along the smooth verge. Some of the girls hauled their tight skirts up. Boys took off hot jackets.
“That’s better,” he said. He turned to me. “Aren’t you going to?”
“Old shoes,” I said, pointing down at them. “They don’t hurt.” His shoes looked to be handmade. I could see they fitted him like gloves. I felt very suspicious of him. “If you really thought it was a test,” I said, “you’ve made them all fail it.”
He shrugged. “It depends if Stallery wants barefoot parlourmaids and footmen with big hairy toes,” he said, and I could have sworn he looked at me closely then, to see if I thought this was what we all intended to be. His piercing dark eyes travelled on down to my carrier bag. “You couldn’t spare a sandwich, could you? I’m starving. The Travellers only eat when they happen to have some food, and that didn’t seem to happen most of the time I was with them.”
I fished him out one of my sandwiches and another for myself. “You couldn’t have been with the gypsies that long,” I said, “or your clothes would have got creased.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “It was nearly a month, actually. Thanks.”
We marched along munching egg and cress, while the driveway unreeled ahead of us and more hills with