The Girl in the Painted Caravan (10 page)

It’s funny, isn’t it, how you can love someone so much and then on some days you look and you just see a complete stranger? As I was growing up, I often saw these emotions register
on my mother’s face, just as they would begin to register on mine when I saw a loving father one minute and then someone I didn’t recognise the next.

I remember very well, even though I was so young, that I was happy when he came home. The night he was due back seemed to drag on endlessly and no matter how hard I tried to keep my eyes open,
it wasn’t long before sleep got the better of me. I awoke to hear noises outside and see my new dress laid at the foot of my bed. My tummy turned over with excitement at the thought of the
delights of the day to come. I could almost taste the ice cream and feel the warmth of his hand holding mine.

When I came out of the vardo, all of the family were seated around a stick fire having their breakfast, including my mother and father. I ran up to Daddy and put my arms around his neck. He
turned and gave me a smile and I felt as if my world was complete again. After a while, my mother and her sister piled into a car and Uncle Nathan drove them down to the amusement park to work,
with calls of ‘See you later’ and ‘Have a good day.’ At last I was alone with my father.

‘Come on, get what you need, we’re going out,’ he said.

I rushed up into the vardo and grabbed my hairbrush. I hurriedly ran it through my hair and checked my appearance in the mirror. I picked up my cardigan and, smiling, stood on the steps of the
vardo, looking down into my daddy’s eyes.

‘Jump, Eva,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ll catch you.’

I stepped forward trustingly, prepared to be caught up in my father’s arms. Before I knew it, I hit the ground with a smack and felt the mud slowly but surely soaking into my clothes.

He had moved out of the way. I was devastated and, as the tears started to come from my eyes, I looked down at his shoes and then up his legs and into those very same eyes which had seconds ago
promised me safety and love. Now they were narrowed and, with pursed lips, he said, ‘Let that be a lesson to you. Never trust anyone.’

He turned on his heels and walked away. How could he do that to me? How could he trick his little girl?

Later, when I was back with Mummy, she wanted to know why I was covered in mud. When I told her, I saw a look in her eyes, fury followed by sadness, something I’d never seen before.

After the incident on the wagon steps, my father kept his distance for a few days, so when he asked me if I’d like him to teach me to swim, I jumped at the chance. Maybe he wasn’t as
mean as I’d just been led to believe. I was always desperate for his approval or attention, glad of any sign that I could be his girl and he could be the kind of father my cousins Daisy and
Honour had in Uncle Cardy.

He brought me down to the beach and walked me across the golden sands to the edge of the water. Laughing out loud, he picked me up and swung me round. This was fun! He put me down, took off his
shoes and rolled up his trouser legs. He picked me up again and waded into the sea with me. All of a sudden, without any warning, he threw me into the sea. Just before I hit the water, I heard him
shout, ‘Now swim!’

I remember the water going up my nose and down my throat and I can still feel the sense of panic I felt when I realised my feet didn’t touch the seabed. My arms were flailing, but I was
going nowhere but down. I felt as if I was dropping to the bowels of the sea.

Eventually, I was picked up by my father and dropped onto the sand, where I must have lain sobbing and snorting for at least twenty minutes. I could still feel the soreness of my throat from the
salty water which I had swallowed in bucketfuls.

I couldn’t see what my father was doing because I was still crying so hard and the salt in my eyes had blurred my vision, but I know he didn’t come to help me, nor did he comfort
me.

Something changed in me that day. If this was my father, who was supposed to look after me and love me, then what were the rest of the people in the world like? I am sure that he is the reason I
have distrusted so many people in the past, and still do. I can’t believe that someone isn’t going to let me down and hurt me just when I have learned to trust them. After all, he did.
He was the first and last man to break my heart.

What makes someone like this? My mother always put my father’s behaviour down to his time in Dunkirk. She was making a weak excuse, not for him, but for me, so that I wouldn’t feel
bad. It was many years later that I realised the real reason: the man simply did not know how to be a father. He did not have the instincts for it, nor did he wish to learn how.

That episode gave me nightmares for many years to come. I would dream of being back flailing in the sea and I would wake up with the sense that my nostrils and mouth were full of salt water.

When my mother found out what had happened to me, a major row followed and she told him she would not let me out with him on my own again. He simply smirked. Maybe this had been his plan all
along? The next day – to my relief and, looking back, to my mother’s – my father left to return to the army.

So my mother was left with my baby brother Nathan and myself. She would take us down to the palmistry place at Butlins with her every day and would pay some of the travelling girls to take us
for walks while she read palms. And that was how life went on, at least for a while.

TEN

I didn’t know at the time how idyllic my childhood was, living the Romany life, surrounded by my family. I am sure there were hardships, but as a child you don’t
see them, do you? For instance, during the war food was rationed and obviously for my family ration books were tricky, because officially the Petulengros didn’t exist. We weren’t
entitled to dole money or pensions either. Luckily, we were given temporary ration books and Mummy learned very quickly how to exchange readings for things that were on ration, stuff like clothing
coupons and so on, which were effectively as good as money.

It was hard for everyone making do with the limited food available while things were being rationed. Once a week we were allowed meat up to the value of
IS
6d, 2oz of
butter, cheese and tea, 8oz of sugar, 4oz of bacon and 1 egg per person. We were also allowed 12oz of sweets each month.

A lot of the fairground travellers used bleach to remove the stamps from their ration books so they could reuse them at the next village. Even gorgers began to do what they needed to do to
survive this awful time in one piece. But I don’t remember food ever being scarce; it was much easier for us Romanies as we were used to living off what nature has to offer to a certain
extent. Granny kept chickens, so we always had fresh eggs, and my uncles would regularly go hunting. Uncle Nathan’s speciality was catching hedgehogs, and he could often be found poking about
in the hedgerows with a stick, searching for the creature that we called the hotchi. They would usually be found curled up, like a bundle of dried grass, and when uncurled you would have to smack
them on the nose with a stick. He had a knack of being able to do this quickly and accurately, making for a much less painful death for the creature. I couldn’t bear to witness this going on
and would always make myself scarce. The hotchi would have his prickles burned off by one of the boys, who would then cover it with wet clay and place it into the ashes of a stick fire. When the
clay is baked, it’s cracked open and the hotchi is pulled out of its mould of clay. The skin then comes away with it, leaving the baked hedgehog to eat. The flavour is a cross between pork
and chicken. It may seem cruel, but when you think of all the other animals people eat, it is not that different. And food always tastes better eaten and cooked outside, over a stick fire.

Uncle Alger was the champion trout tickler, the fine art of rubbing the underbelly of the trout with skilful fingers. This would make the trout go into a trancelike state after a minute or two,
enabling Alger to throw it onto the nearest bit of dry land. The beauty of this was that it required no nets, rods or lines. He would watch the fish working their way up the shallows and rapids and
when his instinct told him to, he would take to the water, slow but sure, kneel on one knee and pass his hand, with his fingers up, under a rock, until he came into contact with the fish’s
tail. He would begin tickling with his forefinger, gradually running his hand along the fish’s belly further and further towards the head, until his hand was under its gills. With a quick
grasp and a struggle, he would wrench it out, stun it with a deft blow to the head and, if he had an audience, he would stick it in his pocket with a wry smile.

The men would also hunt fowl with catapults, which was an art taught to the boys from an early age, passed down from generation to generation.

Uncle Walter kept us healthy with his special gift for making herbal remedies – for animals and humans. If someone was feeling under the weather, he would mix up some sarsaparilla chips,
Spanish liquorice and Epsom salts for them, and order the patient to drink some every morning until it was gone. This would clean the blood and ensure that any sluggishness the person was feeling
would disappear. His other famous recipes were for dandelion or feverfew tea, to cure headaches. Sometimes he would give people bark from the willow tree to hang around their necks. Some people
would have called him a witch doctor, but these simple yet effective remedies still work today. Aspirin is made from willow bark, after all.

I’d wake up in the morning and hear Granny moving around, making breakfast. She’d take some bacon, or perhaps sausages, from the belly box that sat outside, underneath the back of
the vardo, and was used to keep food cool. It was often called a hay box and was also used to transport the chickens and bantams when travelling.

As she cooked on the oven, she’d softly sing her favourite tune, ‘Roses are Blooming in Picardy’. I’d sit on my bed, watching her nod in contentment, as she so often did
when she was concentrating, or talking, or singing. The wonderful smell would drift to Mummy and Shunty in their vardo and they’d come to join us, bringing Nathan.

‘Get that peamingre [tea] on, Shunty,’ Granny would shout. Sometimes one of my uncles’ dogs, usually a whippet, would appear at the door, lured by the smell, and Granny would
shoo it away. ‘Jaw, you wafedi jukel.’ (‘Go away, bad dog.’)

At night the family would sit down around the fire, our bellies full of rabbit stew simmered with freshly picked herbs. As the wood crackled, we children would eagerly wait to
hear the tales our mothers and grandmothers loved to tell.

‘Oh, Granny,’ I’d say, ‘please tell us the story of the nails again.’ She must have told this tale a million times to her own children, but she’d sit down and
begin the story her mother had told her, and hers had before her.

‘When Jesus Christ was betrayed and handed over to the Romans and they were going to crucify him, no blacksmith in the city would forge the nails to do it with. The soldiers were sent to
search further afield. They came across a band of Romanies who were parked up outside the city walls and the soldiers commissioned them to make four nails and said they would return the following
day to collect them. The next day, when they arrived, the Romany smithy declared that he had only been able to make three nails. The angry soldiers said that they needed four and had to have them
that day, as they were going to be crucifying Jesus. The Romanies are very God-fearing people. They prayed at night and truly believed that Jesus was the son of God. At hearing what was to be done
with the nails, the Romanies fled, and this is why Jesus was crucified with three nails instead of four.’

When Granny used to tell her own children this story, she’d put her hand to Naughty’s neck and pull out a gold nail attached to a chain round his neck and it would shine in the light
cast by the fire. As a horse-smith, he wore this good luck symbol, as do many Romany men.

Sometimes we’d be joined round the fire by more distant relatives and other Romany families and their friends. Celebrating births, weddings and even funerals was looked forward to, as it
was a great chance to get together and gossip with faces you hadn’t seen in months, if not years. There were also the horse fairs to attend, and gathering together at Christmas, when we
could, was always a highlight. Each night the men would go to the alehouse to talk and drink, while the females would be left to their own devices, and would sit around the fire, laughing all night
at remembered childhood antics and at bizarre stories they had recently heard. While gossiping, they’d give themselves beauty treatments and possibly drink the odd drop of gin from a
teacup.

I remember sitting quietly round the fire listening to Kyra, who was a distant cousin and who was always up to reminiscing about being beaten to within an inch of her life. In between giggling,
she told the tale.

‘It was me mother and father’s wedding anniversary the next day, so I’d made an excuse that I wanted to go buy meself a blouse. So there I am, I’ve bought a nice present
for their anniversary, a bit of cut glass, and as I come out the shop, this young man who pretended he knew me brother stopped me to ask how me brother was and how long we’d be staying in the
village. I tried to get away from him, but he kept talking. I didn’t know it, but me father’s brother saw me stood talking to him. By the time I got home, me father was as mad as hell
and asked me where I’d been. Well, I didn’t want to tell him that I’d been to buy him a present, did I? His face was nearly black with anger and he went striding off up the
field.

‘Give me some more gin, dear,’ Kyra held her cup out for a refill. ‘Then I saw him coming towards me. He’d cut himself a stick and, even though I was eighteen years old,
he whacked me something rotten on me legs and bum, because he thought I’d been making myself fair over a gorger boy.’ All the girls started laughing at this, because they all knew the
tale by now.