Gypsy Boy (10 page)

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Authors: Mikey Walsh

BOOK: Gypsy Boy
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The moment of truth: ‘Come on then,’ Uncle Tory growled. This had become a sadistic game; a puzzle that I had to solve, or die. I was trying to think of people who weren’t cartoon characters or just random numbers, passing through my thoughts like pointless invaders. Then a surge of energy began to rise from my guts. One person who I would surely die to hear he had met. In my head my father began to shout, ‘Someone butch,
SOMEONE BUTCH!
’ My throat clogged with an excitement as, in the most frantic and completely deranged tone, I belted out, ‘Oh my God, have you met Madonna?’
As I spoke the words I realised my mistake. I fell back
into the seat and threw my hands over my mouth. But it was too late. The brakes jerked for a mere second, throwing me against the dashboard. Uncle Tory’s eyes had frosted over and he looked at me as if I was something he had trodden in.
‘No. I haven’t met’ – he almost gagged just saying it – ‘Madonna.’
I had blown it.
We didn’t go to the job, we headed straight to the yard, where Uncle Joseph, Tory and Noah were outside chucking some tyres into a skip fire. The whole place was thick with black smoke.
Uncle Tory leaned across me and opened the passenger door.
‘Get out, Mikey.’ He signalled to young Tory and Noah. ‘I need you boys to come with me.’
Joseph walked around to the driver’s window and spoke in a polite whisper. ‘Ain’t you meant to be taking Mikey out with you today?’
As I clambered down the steps I watched Tory mouth the word ‘useless’. I jumped the last steps and crashed to the ground, tearing my T-shirt, grazing my stomach and knocking Noah over in the process.
Uncle Tory told Joseph to phone my father and tell him to come and collect me.
As Uncle Tory and the boys drove off, Uncle Joseph stared at the blood across my stomach. ‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.
I looked down. ‘And I’ve ripped my T-shirt.’
He took me inside and put on the heater. ‘Get that top off,’ he said.
I hated my body, so I kept the T-shirt on. The bars on the heater crackled and started to glow and Uncle Joseph came back with a box of plasters and a damp piece of rag. ‘You’re bleeding, Mikey, take it off.’
‘Can I just keep it on, it’s cold.’
‘Mikey, there’s nothing left of the old thing now anyway.’ He grabbed at my shirt and lifted it over my head, tossing it to the floor. ‘Get yourself on this table.’
I used an old car engine as a stepping-stone and stood shivering on the table as he slapped the wet rag onto the wound. Compared to others I’d had it was minor. My belly jiggled as Joseph moved the rag around. ‘I feel silly,’ I giggled.
‘It’s all right,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve got a lot more than you have.’ And with that, he shoved an arm under his top and cradled his stomach like a monster sack of porridge.
‘Here, this’ll make it better.’ He lifted the old heater and placed it on the engine, aiming it at me. He manoeuvred me round in circles like a kebab on a spit, dabbing away at the excess blood.
‘Are you hurting anywhere else?’
‘Nope.’
‘Nowhere?’
‘No, I don’t hurt at all.’
He put down the cloth and placed his hand just below the cut pushing his fingers into my stomach. ‘How about here?’
‘Nope,’ I smiled proudly.
He lowered his hand and placed it behind my belt buckle. ‘Here?’
I giggled. ‘Nope.’
‘Stop laughing,’ he chuckled. He placed his hand on the opposite side and wiggled his fingers. ‘Here?’
‘No,’ I laughed, pulling at his wrist.
He smiled, and lowered his hand. ‘How about here?’
He wiggled his fingers again; I felt the tips tickle my penis.
I took his wrist with both hands and started to pull. ‘Get it out,’ I laughed.
He tickled my penis again, laughing.
‘Why, Mikey? Does it make you feel funny?’
‘Yes!’ I screamed, pulling at his arm.
His laughing mouth snapped shut as he pushed me against the wall. He buried his hand deeper and softly grasped my penis, massaging it like a piece of moulding clay. His eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of funny?’
I loosened my grip on his arm. ‘I don’t know.’
The crackle of the heater was the loudest thing in the room.
I could feel him moving his fingers back and forth. ‘Can I see it?’
‘Why?’ I answered, beginning to feel very uncomfortable.
‘I want to see what it looks like.’
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I pursed my lips and nodded.
Uncle Joseph removed his hand and lifted my legs, slowly removing my shoes and socks, then everything else. I was naked on the table, trying to stay within the warmth of the heater’s beam.
‘Turn around,’ said Joseph, poking me in the arm.
I did, five times or so, feeling more like a kebab than ever. He shouted me to stop as I faced the wall. I opened
my eyes and stared into the cold blue paintwork resting my hands against the wall.
He moved closer, and sighed. ‘Mikey, you are the prettiest boy amongst Gypsies.’ He stroked a finger across my buttocks. I was scared.
‘Am I?’ My high-pitched squeak had returned, and made him snigger.
‘Yes. Those two boys can fight, but that’s because it’s what they’ve been bred to do. What you’ve got cannot be learned; you’ve been born with what you have. One day, when you grow into it, you will make them all sick as pigs. Remember that.’
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant.
‘I will, Uncle Joseph.’
‘How clean are you, Mikey?’
‘I got shot with the hosepipe yesterday.’
For the next hour he raped me, with every part of his body that would fit into mine.
When it was over, as I pulled my clothes back on, he pointed a finger into my face. ‘Listen, Mikey, what you got me to do today, if he finds out, he will
kill
you.’
‘But I didn’t …’
He gave me a soft clip up the side of the head. ‘If I tell him what happened, when he gets through this door …’
Through the window, behind Joseph’s shoulder, my father stepped from the truck, lighting a cigarette and adjusting his braces.
‘Please don’t tell him!’
‘I won’t if you don’t. Take an oath you won’t talk to him about it, and I’ll make up something that will make you look cushti.’
‘All right!’
‘Good.’ He turned in his chair as my father stepped through the doorway. ‘How yer doin boyeeee?’
‘How are ya, Mush, all right?’ my father replied with a half smile.
‘Cushti, bruv, cushti.’
‘I can see that.’ He turned to me. ‘Why ain’t you out workin’?’
Joseph leaned back in his chair, locking his fingers and stretching out his arms. ‘Stop talking like that to the boy, Frankie. He’s been out there working with me all day.’
‘Have you?’ my father said, almost shocked at Joseph’s positive comment.
I nodded.
‘Yes he has.’ Joseph repeated.
‘Why didn’t he go with Tory?’
‘Because he was needed here! Fucking hell, Frankie, you said you wanted the boy to come here and work and that’s what he’s been doing.’
I stiffened, waiting to see if he would buy the story.
‘And he did all right?’
‘Better than all right, Frank.’
‘I’ll bring him back to you next week, then.’
‘Yeah. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mikey?’
I slipped down from the chair, holding on to the overalls. They both stared, waiting for my reply. I managed a smile.
‘Yeah.’
That Evil Bowers Girl
For the next few years, I was sent to the scrapyard one day a week.
Joseph had offered to ‘train’ me, and Uncle Tory and my father were only too happy to leave me to him. Uncle Tory would take off in the lorry, with young Tory and Noah, and I would be left to the mercies of my uncle for hours at a time.
Every week he would take me into the back room, make me take my clothes off, and repeat the nightmare all over again. He would lift me across old Noah’s desk, where I would lie on my back as he stuffed a clenched fist into my mouth while he masturbated. Just as I felt my jaw was about to break, he would pull out and fill my mouth with the sticky mess that squirted from him.
As the weeks went by he would try different experiments, painful acts that left me unable to swallow or sit or even breathe too deeply. Sometimes he would kick and punch and scratch me during these sessions. If Tory or my grandfather were in the office that day then he would take me out in the lorry; making me either strip and play with myself or go down on him as we drove to our next scrap pick up. There was no escape.
I couldn’t say no. Not just because he was triple my size, but also because he had all the power. If I didn’t do what
he wanted he would tell my father, and we both knew that one word about me having ‘played up’ would get me a beating.
I did try, once, to tell my father what was happening. It was the same day that I had tried to refuse Joseph’s advances. He had got his revenge by telling my father that I had been lazy and answered him back.
In the car on the way home my father lashed out at me.
‘Answering Joseph back! (Thud) Being lazy! (Wham).’
I decided to tell my father everything about Joseph, and what he had done. But as I told him, falteringly, about what was happening, his eyes exploded with rage at my gruesome ‘lie’. He began to shout above my pleas, then, not being able to quieten me, he slammed his fist into my mouth, splattering my lips through the gaps of my teeth. He did not want to hear it, and it only made my punishment worse. I knew then that I could never tell anyone. I was utterly alone.
I was still wetting the bed every night and being taken out to the beating shed every morning. If I had extra scratches and bruises, my father didn’t notice or care.
Around the rest of the family Joseph acted as though we were friends who shared a secret; winking, joking and acting as though my silence meant I liked the things he did.
I was trapped. But it wasn’t Joseph that I feared most. It was what my father would do if I didn’t do as Joseph said. As long as I played the game, Joseph told my father I had worked hard and done well. That’s how it worked.
At the campsite Frankie and I were no longer alone. As more plots were completed, more families arrived, and we children became an inseparable clan. A year after we first
moved in the site was finished and it seemed we had finally settled somewhere that we could stay.
Coming back to the camp from anywhere else was like entering into another world: a full-scale exotic trailer-filled town, created and built by Gypsies for Gypsies. Fresh concrete had been poured on top of the mud that had once been everywhere, and a smart road of jet-black tarmac flowed right through it. At the main entrance the walls curved and spiralled ingeniously like frozen waves. At the very tip of each solid wave stood the life-sized stone head of a wild horse, peering like a milky-eyed guardian at the people passing below. And inside, the plots were no longer marked out with red string, but with scarlet brick walls, eight feet tall, surrounding each home like gigantic theatrical curtains.
We were still at St Luke’s School, with Jamie-Leigh Bowers, our cousins Olive and Twizzel and a few of the other children from the site. None of the other kids liked school, and I pretended not to, but secretly I needed it as a refuge; it kept me from being at home, or with Joseph.
Our parents saw school as a place where we had to go, because the law said so, and they didn’t care whether we learned anything there. My mother was the exception, she wanted me to read and write, and so did Mrs Kerr, who encouraged me and tried to help, whenever I was in her class.
Ever since the accident in class and the knickers moment, she had fought my corner and encouraged my artistic skills, and she stuck up for me when the school bully, Scott Leemer, had a go at me. She even gave me a wink when we were taken to the Head’s office for a telling off.
I came to love Mrs Kerr. She was the only person who showed me tenderness and affection. To have one person believe in me and encourage me to be whatever I wanted to be was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.
My education was patchy, to say the least, but I did manage to learn the alphabet well enough to recognise the look and sound of each letter, and to read and write a few three-letter words: dog, cat, run. But most of all I enjoyed art. Drawing people fascinated me and I could do a good pencil portrait.
I wished I could go to school every day, but although I was supposed to go four days a week, it often ended up being just one or two. I would be given jobs about the plot, or sent to the scrapyard for an extra day, while the girls were kept back and trained in how to run a home.
When we did get to school we were either ignored or picked on by the other kids. Only lunchtime gave us a break, because we had our own dinner table. No one else dared to sit there, in case they found themselves cursed, robbed blind or with some kind of monstrous Pikey disease.
When it came to the staff Mrs Kerr was in a minority of one. Even the dinner ladies hated us. Every day they made sure we were the last to be asked to queue for food, which meant we only got what was left by all the other kids. The ladies behind the counter would glare as they slapped the dried-up remains onto our plates. A slice of spam fritter, without the fritter, was a rare treat.
Mrs Bannerman was the head dinner lady. We called her Old Pig’s Head and it suited her. She had a dyed orange comb-over and a permanently sour face.
One lunchtime Jamie-Leigh and Olive and Twizzel returned from the queue. Twizzel was cackling and pointing at Olive’s tray. ‘You got a feather up your arse?’ said Frankie, drowning her food in tomato sauce.
‘Look what dat old cunt’s just give me ferr me dinner.’
We leaned over to look at what looked scarily like a chain-smoker’s lung. Olive picked up a fork and prodded the black lump, which sank to the plate like a melting witch. ‘Old piggy wotsit made her have it!’
We opened up our yogurt cartons, licking the lids and discussing where we would play after school. Frankie wanted to venture out of our camp to explore the grounds of the mental home next door.
She aimed her empty yogurt pot at me like a cannon. ‘You have to as well, Mikey. If I get killed by me dad, then I ain’t going through it on my own.’
‘I wanted to go anyway,’ I insisted.
Cheers of agreement flew around the table.
Then Mrs Bannerman appeared. ‘Just
what
is all this commotion about?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Twizzel, narrowing her eyes.
‘Good. Then pick up that cutlery and eat your food. That’s if you are accustomed to using cutlery.’ She glared at us, before marching away.
‘Old cunt,’ said Jamie-Leigh through her teeth, dropping a spoon into her yogurt pot. She pulled in her cheeks making a digging sound in her throat and spat a slug of rubbery green slime into her yogurt pot.
‘Miss, this yogurt’s gone off.’
Old Pig’s Head turned and came back to the table. She snatched the pot from Jamie-Leigh’s hand and picked up
a clean spoon, then stirred slowly through the mush before raising a loaded spoonful to her mouth.
‘Tastes fine to me, Miss Bowers. Maybe next time you won’t be so fussy.’
She stalked off, as we cried with laughter.
At playtime we would all meet in the girls’ toilet so that the girls could grab a sly after lunch cigarette – most of them, including Frankie, were experienced smokers by the age of ten.
One break time Olive, our nominated look-out that day, was spotted by Mrs Bannerman, who gave chase. Olive raced into the girls’ toilets to warn us, slamming the door open so hard that it smashed into Jamie-Leigh’s front teeth. Jamie-Leigh’s head flew back, blood all over her mouth. She put her arm into her mouth to stop herself screaming and leaned against the door. Seconds later Mrs Bannerman barged through the door.
‘Aaargh! My tooth.’
I stood, slack-jawed and in total awe of Jamie-Leigh’s deviousness.
‘You spiteful old witch. Look what you’ve done!’ she sobbed.
Mrs Bannerman fell back against the wall in shock; her hands flew to her mouth as she peered around the side of the door to where Jamie-Leigh was cupping a tooth in a small pool of blood in her hand. The blood trickled between her fingers and down her arms. At that point two other dinner ladies came in, giving Mrs Bannerman disapproving looks, as they escorted Jamie-Leigh off to the nurse.
When we took our seats on the carpet in Mrs Kerr’s classroom that afternoon, Jamie-Leigh was still with the
nurse, waiting for her mother to come and collect her. The school assistant came in to warn Mrs Kerr that she had arrived.
Seconds later the sound of Aunt Audrey’s stiletto heels echoed through the school. She swung into our classroom, tossing her black hair and throwing her mink stole over her shoulder. She was wearing more diamonds than clothes, which was typical for her. She eyed Mrs Kerr like a cobra. ‘Where’s my Jamie-Leigh?’
Mrs Kerr rose from her seat. ‘Oh, hello Mrs Bowers.’
‘Oh, fuck off will you,’ Aunt Audrey snapped. She had an accent that sounded like a fork dragging across a plate.
Mrs Kerr tried to edge her out of the room, but at that moment Aunt Audrey spotted us on the carpet. ‘Hiya kids!’ she squealed, waving a heavily bejewelled hand.
Mrs Kerr took Aunt Audrey to where Jamie-Leigh was, before coming back to take her seat for register. She had to raise her voice to drown out the profanities ringing through the school corridors, as Aunt Audrey saw the damage to her child.
After that the teachers banned us from going indoors during breaks, so we moved our lunchtime rendezvous to a small brick maze which was hidden from the school playground and had plenty of nooks to hide – and smoke – in.
We kept ourselves to ourselves because more often than not our contact with the Gorgia kids ended in an exchange of taunts, insults and scraps. And sometimes fully fledged fights broke out. The girls were almost always the main targets of the prejudice. And they could never let a bad
comment go. No matter how big, ugly or threatening the bully, our girls would never back down from a fight.
A lot of nasty comments were aimed at me, but as long as the girls weren’t around to hear it, I would turn a deaf ear. But when the girls were involved and things became heated, I would be called on to step in and defend their honour. It was my duty as the boy. I hated violence; I couldn’t stand it. But I could never seem to escape it. At home, at work, and now even at school, there was always someone who wanted to beat me up.
There was an important lesson I had been taught about fighting, and strangely it had not come from my father, but from my mother.
‘Never throw a punch. Never be a bully. Never go looking for a fight. But if anyone ever hits you and it hurts, then they deserve to be hit back.’
I tried to stick to this. And on those occasions when I did have to hit back, I had one big advantage – what the little monsters who bullied us didn’t know, was that my tolerance for physical pain was far higher than theirs.
I soon discovered that most of those I had to fight were just a lot of hot air. They bullied anyone who showed fear, but if you fought back, they turned out to be cowards.
The number one bully at the school was Scott Leemer. Most of the kids either admired him for his quiff, like Danny Zuko from
Grease
, and his thuggish ways, or steered clear of the gang of little thugs he headed. His right-hand man was Jenny Hardy. A girl in name only, almost as feared and loathed by most of us as Scott was.
One playtime I arrived at the maze to find them waiting for me. The gang, who were all older than me, surrounded
me and began to close in. Then Scott walked in, handed his jacket to another kid, and began leaping around, bashing his fists together like a cartoon boxer.
I thought he looked pathetic compared to the boys at the boxing club.
He threw some pretend punches to make me flinch. ‘I hear you’re hard, Gypsy boy.’
He walked up to me and pushed me with both hands, and I fell over. A crowd was gathering around us. I spotted the girls, peering through the crowd, each looking a little worse for wear. Frankie’s face was red and tear-stained and her lip was bleeding. Her pretty pigtails had been yanked about and undone.
‘Kill him!’ she screamed.
I looked over at Scott, who was circling with his arms in the air, working the crowd like a pro. ‘Shall I do it?’ He was laughing.
They howled and screeched, shaking their fists in a primal excitement, hungry for Gypsy blood.

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