There’s the flicker of kingcup yellow on the puddled mud. A low disturbance in a raft of watercress in front of the Big House. A sleek paper dart of a bird appears, arrowing in undulations, lemon-yellow belly reflecting up at itself. It pauses on a clod. It’s slim, elegant, poised as a jewellery-box ballerina, dancing to the tune of its wagging tail.
To me, this is “Polly Dishwash”, the grey wagtail: at least half yellow, but not as yellow as the yellow wagtail. Riddle me that one, my grandad would say.
He taught me that a grey wagtail – a “water wagtail” – was a sign of a good, clean place to stop. He would take my brother, cousins and I on long walks over a different chalk hill than the one I live below now: Portsdown Hill in Portsmouth, and to the ford of another chalk stream, where he’d say: “Look for the Washerwoman! Find Polly Dishwash [sometimes Molly Washdish] and we’ll stop there.”
We always saw “her” making little flamenco feints after midges. We’d eat an apple, some thick and sticky homemade coconut ice, pull some green wheat stalks from the fields, nibble the soft milky grains, and dip a tin cup into the clear water and drink. Imagine what chemicals, in the 1970s and 80s! Sometimes we’d pick wet, peppery watercress and eat it between slices of white bread.
I know now that our “stopping place” (I remember the Romany words atchin tan that I thought he’d made up) must have had a different significance for him: a reference to some traditions, superstitions and Gypsy lore passed down by his grandmother, who perhaps didn’t need to distance herself from her heritage, as he or his mother did.
The wagtail dances on. A flash of sink-side rubber-glove lemon; of sparkling water and sudsy glasses; washing up-scented memories of coconut ice, singing and a tea towel flipped over a shoulder.
I wonder how many others make those kinds of associations. I think to myself: “Oke Romano chiriklo, dikasa e Kalen!” – see a wagtail (though usually a pied one), soon see a Gypsy! There is no one about. But I look down at my reflection in the water, and smile.
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