The Girl in the Painted Caravan (12 page)

‘Oh shut up, Eva, it hurts,’ she whined, as she hopped from foot to foot, rubbing her legs..

‘OK, OK,’ I shouted. ‘I’ll find a dock leaf, hang on.’

Soon I was holding the leaves on her burning skin, and within a matter of seconds you could see her sense of relief as the leaves took away the stinging sensation. During the summer months all
three of us would look like we had been in the wars. We were always getting into scrapes and were permanently etched with scars and scratches. That’s when Granny’s homemade jam would
come into its own. Not only was it delicious to eat, but it was also used as medication for our grazed elbows and knees. A jar of jam would always be left open and it would form a fluffy, blue-grey
skin, rather like mould mixed with a spider’s web. This skin would be placed on the injured part of the body and worked a treat. It’s the Romany version of penicillin.

As well as scratches, in early autumn I would always have the itch, because I was allergic to pears and plums and wasn’t allowed to eat them. That never stopped me, though. Everyone knew
when I’d been bad because I would break out in heat spots, which I would then scratch until my arms and legs were covered in red scabs. These would weep and even then I kept picking the heads
off. ‘Eva’s got the plague again,’ Daisy and Vera would chant. But picking the heads off the scabs was something I just couldn’t resist, just as I couldn’t resist the
beautiful plums and pears.

On that particular day, with Daisy covered in nettle stings, we abandoned the idea of looking for four-leaf clovers. ‘What next?’ Vera asked, deflated, and then we all locked eyes.
Grinning, we shouted in unison, ‘Mud pies!’

Vera snuck back into her vardo to grab her mother’s pudding basin, which she filled with water from the tub outside. Meanwhile, Daisy and I found a spot behind my mother’s vardo and
started to scoop up earth with our hands until Vera joined us, water sloshing over the sides of the bowl.

An hour later, we were caked with mud and had made three ‘chocolate’ cakes, four towers and something that resembled a small house, but was now quickly collapsing on the right side.
Just as we were about to try to rescue it, a big shadow appeared over us. We froze. Maybe if we pretended we were statues, the shadow would move away. No such luck. A horrified voice shrieked from
behind us, ‘Daisy, Eva and Vera, look at the state of you all!’

It was our cousin Honour, Daisy’s older sister, and she was not pleased. ‘Daisy obviously forgot that the dress she is wearing is new, but she’s about to remember, aren’t
you, gal? And as for you two . . .’

I don’t know how Honour managed to hold all three of us by our ears at the same time, but somehow she did. We were very quickly and painfully escorted up from the ground and, before I knew
it, the pudding basin was being refilled and, along with a torrent of Romany words which I’m sure I should not have recognised at so young an age, we were washed and scrubbed down from head
to toe. We were always taught to respect our elders and Honour was three years older than us. At the grand old age of nine, she had an old head on her shoulders.

That is not to say that we were never allowed to make mud pies again. But this was certainly the day we learned never to do it in new clothes!

We were all beautifully clean and tidy for Uncle Nathan’s wedding that summer. He was in his mid-forties. Uncle Alger had married in his mid-thirties, but his wife could
not take his drinking and by now they had split up, while my uncle Walter never married. Uncle Nathan had fallen in love with Bertha Taylor from Hopton, a very striking Romany girl of about
twenty-two, with eyelashes so long they looked like a fringe round her big eyes. The family came from round the country for the traditional ceremony and we had the usual campfire festivities. But
Bertha also wanted to be married in a church, in a definite break from tradition for both of the families. She chose St Matthew’s church in Lumley Avenue, Skegness.

To this day, I feel guilty and so sorry for poor Bertha. There we were, around twenty children aged from about two to twelve, all of us trouble at the best of times. None of us had been in a
church before or had the slightest idea of how to behave. Uncle Cardy had emptied his pockets and given Daisy and me all his pennies, in return for a promise of good behaviour.

We were sat at the back of the church, shuffling a bit on the hard pews, when right in the middle of the ceremony I felt the coins slip out of my hot hand and clatter onto the stone floor. I
closed my eyes in horror as the pennies span and then fell flat with an echoing clink. It seemed to last forever. As the church fell silent, I opened my eyes to see rows of faces glaring at me.
Even today, I can feel the embarrassment of that moment.

Eventually the vicar coughed and everyone faced forward again as he resumed the service. About five minutes later, Daisy gave me a naughty look, opened her hand and let her pennies fall in a
repeat performance. It did make a marvellous noise, but poor Aunt Bertha was nervous as a kitten and the parson was now wondering what the devil was happening.

Daisy and I were in trouble afterwards, but not as much as Uncle Cardy, who got most of the blame for giving us the coins in the first place!

I suppose not having been brought up as churchgoers, we did not hold it in much awe. We do believe in God and in right and wrong. As children, it was drummed into us that God did not like wicked
people. If I can look in the mirror and know that I have done nothing wrong, haven’t deliberately hurt anyone or been unkind, then I can like myself and know God likes me. If I am not ashamed
of myself, then God is not ashamed of me. These simple beliefs are widely held by Romanies. We may not practise organised religion, but we would not sin on Saturday and ask for forgiveness on
Sunday, as some gorgers seem to do.

When we were children, my father told us that we could go to church if we wished, but he emphasised that he was an atheist, even though my mother was not. In fact, all of my mother’s
family are very Godfearing people.

Granny managed to get Bertha a kiosk for dukkering at Butlins amusement park and one day my cousin Daisy and I took her a cup of tea. When she’d finished her tea, she asked us to look
after the place while she went off to spend a penny.

As soon as she’d gone, I sat down in Bertha’s chair and started playing with the crystal ball. This stood on a beautiful black velvet cloth with little silver claws sewn on it which
held mock diamonds. Picking idly at these, to see how they were fixed, one of the stones came away in my hand. I was just thinking of how to replace it when a lady put her head inside the door and
asked if the clairvoyant was there. We told her that Bertha wouldn’t be long and then the lady asked if we had any lucky charms for sale. We had a look around, hating to turn a customer away,
but couldn’t find any. Then I suddenly remembered the mock diamond I was still clutching. ‘Only these,’ I said, holding out the stone as though I were offering the Koh-i-noor.
‘Sixpence each.’

The lady gave me a funny look, but she gave me the sixpence as well. Daisy and I were in business! She sat plucking the stones out of the black velvet cloth while I stood at the door, calling
out, ‘Get your lucky charms here! Only a tanner each!’ We sold three before Bertha got back.

She never left us in charge again.

THIRTEEN

‘That’s the most awful suit I have ever seen in my life,’ Mummy said.

‘It’s OK,’ replied Daddy. He was one of the very first men to be demobbed, having done six years’ service, and he received eighty pounds as a gratuity and a grey,
chalk-striped demob suit which he thought was quite dapper.

With that, Mummy grabbed one of the sleeves of the jacket and clenched it tightly in her fists. She then let go, nodded her head knowingly and said, ‘Look at that, all crumpled already. I
wouldn’t even let you out the door in that. Can you imagine what the arse of your trousers will look like when you’ve been sitting down for a while?’

They both burst out laughing and within the hour it had been disposed of in the dustbin.

They had been apart more than they had been together during the eight years of their marriage, but now they were free to go back to their own way of life. For Nathan and myself, it was a bit
like having a stranger come to stay – this man we hardly knew was now a permanent part of our life. I suppose he must have felt the same way as he seemed reluctant to spend any time alone
with us, and definitely didn’t tell us stories or play games with us, or do any of the other things a father would normally do with his children. We were in Spalding and continued to make the
town our base, but just as my father’s return was to change things for us, so the war had changed things forever for the Romany.

There were very few horse-drawn vardos left now, of course, but it was more than that. After the war, things were very different. There was a new kind of outlook. Some of the men had been in the
services and had mixed regularly with the gorgers, and the wartime rules and regulations, like rationing, had forced the rest of us into more frequent contact with non-Romanies. More of us were
beginning to marry out of the race than ever before.

It wasn’t like that for us children, though. We didn’t mix with the gorgers more than we had to – and we didn’t like playing with the gorger children at all. It was
always so boring when they asked us the same questions about our way of life. The main one always being how did we go to the toilet.

Most caravans these days do have toilets built in them, but we would never have dreamed of using an inside toilet. We would have thought it extremely unhygienic, not being able to flush the
waste away and carrying it about with you. We used to carry with us a chemical toilet and four sheets of hardboard. As soon as we arrived anywhere, Daddy’s first job was to set up the toilet
hut and, when we left, he would dispose of the waste in a healthy way, usually by digging a deep hole and covering it with earth, before folding up the hut. We liked to stay in pub yards because
they’d have toilets outside. Sometimes, if we were based near some older-type houses, the kind that had their lavatory built at the bottom of the garden, we might make an arrangement with the
householder for our family to use that.

As far as rubbish was concerned, we used to carry dustbins around with us and lots of paper bags and sacks. We never, ever littered the countryside and only dumped our rubbish in the places
provided by the local authorities. Often we would travel miles in order to take our rubbish to the nearest corporation tip.

We never used public baths, mainly because, though it probably sounds curious to the average gorger, we didn’t like the idea of using baths that had been used by other people. We tended to
have strip washes all over – and every day, I may add. But we also had a corrugated tin bath that we would use once or twice a week and would fill with water heated in saucepans over the
fire. I remember how lovely it felt when the bath water had got cold and Mummy would top it up with a lovely big saucepan of piping hot water. I think the most common misconception about gypsies is
that they are dirty, though this probably stems from the fact that so many of us have swarthy skin.

I must admit, though, that there was one thing about the gorger children that fascinated me, and that was the fact that they went to school. From about the age of five, I had a secret
determination to learn to read and write. I had a passion for drawing as well, and I knew that at school they drew and painted. Whenever I had the opportunity, I used to ask gorger children
questions about what went on at school.

One day, some of them asked if I would like to attend Sunday school with them and, curiosity overcoming my wariness, I asked my mother if I could go. She said she would think about it and, with
half an hour still to spare before we needed to head off, I rejoined the gorgers. Eagerly, I asked them all about it: what would it be like, when was playtime? They fell about laughing at me.

‘You don’t have playtime at Sunday school, silly,’ one boy said.

‘You’re
silly!’ I flared back, feeling hurt and humiliated by their laughter. And then, of course, we started calling each other names and suddenly they were no longer
friends but on the other side of the fence, gorger strangers calling me ‘stupid gypsy, dirty gypsy’ and the rest of their insults. After that incident, I was even more wary of mixing
with them.

But the idea of going to school persisted – it was my biggest desire in the whole world. In fact, in a sign of changing times, some travelling people were now sending their children to
boarding school in order for them to get an education. It had to be boarding school so that they could continue to travel and earn a living, which was the only way of life they knew.

Mummy told me much later that she’d realised that I had a thirst for knowledge and needed to learn things she couldn’t help me with, especially when it came to the three Rs: reading,
writing and arithmetic. Just by listening to the radio, she knew how much the world was changing and didn’t want me to be left behind. So one Friday morning, she took me to some shops in a
little place called Bourne in Lincolnshire and, to my great surprise, asked the man in charge to fit me for a school uniform. My heart nearly stopped with excitement. We left with a beautiful grey
jacket and a pleated grey skirt, a white shirt and a white, black and grey tie.

It was unbearable that weekend to wait for Monday morning. I hardly slept thinking about the fountain of knowledge I was about to encounter. On Monday morning, however, it was a totally
different story. I had a panic attack thinking of myself trapped in this school with all of the gorgers. Would I make a fool of myself? Would I get the cane? Would they laugh at me? And, most of
all, would they call me a dirty gypsy because I lived in a caravan? With these thoughts in my head, I climbed underneath the table and wrapped myself around one of its legs.

Mummy tried to coax me out with kind words. ‘Come on, Eva, this is what you’ve always wanted.’