The Girl in the Painted Caravan (14 page)

We learned a big lesson from that winter and never again, no matter how troublesome it was to carry, did we let ourselves run short of fuel. Because, even with the sack of coke for the stove, we
still had a problem to solve, with no Calor gas for lighting. My parents both agreed, though, that it would do until tomorrow.

When the next day arrived, it was just as bad, worse if anything, for the snow had drifted down all night. It was deep enough for five-year-old Nathan to disappear in it, and knee-deep for a
tall adult. My father ploughed a furrow through to the pub and, from there, phoned all the depots, sites, boat yards, anywhere and everywhere he could think of that might keep a supply of Calor
gas. He had no luck. They were all out of stock and not expecting any more supplies until traffic could get through again.

He came back to the vardo, put on all his winter clothes again and went out, swearing that he wouldn’t return until he’d got some from somewhere. He was headed for the river and, in
the mood he was in, I think we were quite worried that he meant to drown himself if he didn’t find his gas.

But a number of cabin cruisers were moored on the river and my father guessed most of these would have facilities that were much the same as we had in the vardo. He was right in his guess and
there, in full view, just inside the cabin of one of the boats, was a large cylinder that had clearly hardly been used. My father explained his problem to the man who looked after the craft and the
man said he was sorry, but under no circumstances could he let anything be taken off any of the boats without the owners’ permission. So then my father asked who owned that particular boat
and, fortunately, it was a local man who lived not too far away – although in that weather even a short distance seemed miles. He went up to see the man, but he was away in the South of
France, according to the housekeeper. She too was sympathetic, but refused to act without permission, so he was stuck again.

By this time, the best of the day, such as it was, had already gone and he knew that if he had to visit the owner of each boat that might have gas aboard it could take a week. So he went back to
the river, waited until the boatman went off for a break, then forced open the door of the cabin cruiser and removed the gas cylinder. He left a note for the owner, explaining exactly what
he’d done and why he’d done it and that he would leave the money with the governor at the pub. He then fixed the lock so that it would be secure again and went off with his prize.

My father, for all his many faults, would never steal. He didn’t believe in it, and neither do I. And I think the man whose boat it was must have acknowledged and respected that about him
because he never did attempt to collect his money from the landlord at the pub. I think he knew just how desperate my father must have been feeling at that time.

So we had warmth and light, and a few days after that the weather did finally break and start to clear. Mummy would come up with different ideas to keep us occupied, from cleaning and polishing
the silver to cutting up my comics and making shapes with them. We played I Spy and, of course, we had the radio and listened to
Down My Way
and
Workers’ Playtime,
and Tommy
Handley and Jack Train in
It’s That Man Again.
She also taught Nathan and me how to waltz and do the quickstep. Both Mummy and I had a battle on our hands when Nathan kept insisting on
opening the door to try to get out and play in the snow. A couple of times, we were both allowed out, but after just a few minutes we’d run back into the vardo, covered with snow, with a hot
ache in our fingers and toes. Hot milk and toast with jam would warm our insides and get us feeling right as rain again in no time.

Eventually, after being stuck and out of work for some weeks, the snow melted and we got on the road again, this time to Stamford, about forty miles away, where their annual mid-Lent fair was
due to be held in a couple of days’ time. Traffic was heavy and it took us ages to get there, but eventually we did and parked on a large piece of waste ground which sloped down to the River
Welland (which flowed through Spalding too, on its way to the sea). The river was running high with melted snow. We were parked by the recreation ground, where part of the fair would be held,
alongside the wagons of the fairground travellers.

It was the usual pattern on that night. The men went off to the local and the women whom we knew from previous fairs came round to our vardo and swapped tales of the hardships endured during the
spell of bad weather.

We children were in bed, but I was still awake when my father came in at about ten o’clock. He must have been exhausted, for there had been all the packing up when we’d left that
morning, and then the dead-slow crawl all the way to Stamford in terrible conditions, and then getting parked and jacked up on the new site. Wanting nothing more than to drop right into bed and off
to sleep, he was aghast when my mother told him that she wanted him to move the wagon there and then.

‘What are you talking about, woman?’ he demanded. ‘I’m hungry. Come on, let’s have a meal and get to bed.’

I sat up, taking all of this in. ‘Eddie,’ replied my mother, ‘I am absolutely serious. The river is going to come up tonight and we are going to be flooded, and we can’t
stand any more expense or trouble.’

‘Look,’ my father said, very patiently under the circumstances, ‘I’ve just been talking in the pub with some men from the river boards and it so happens I made a point of
asking them if there was any danger of flooding and they said there was no chance.’

‘I don’t care what they said,’ my mother answered back, and then one thing led to another and it finished up a right old row. But no matter how much my father complained, she
just would not give in. So, in the end, swearing under his breath, he went outside to get on with the job. It is no easy task to move a vardo. He had to pack all the gear inside, then get the motor
in position to tow the caravan, then wind up the jacks, which were placed at the four corners. But at last he was ready to go.

He started up the motor, which promptly died on him. He tinkered about with it for about a quarter of an hour, the metal freezing cold on his hands, cursing his bad luck. Then he realised he was
out of petrol and that was the last straw. He slammed into the vardo and announced that he would put up the jacks again and we would move in the morning.

‘If we don’t move now,’ said my mother,‘I am going to take these children and book into a hotel,’ and she started to get us out of bed and dressed. Realising she
was never going to change her mind, my father went off to a neighbour’s wagon and asked if he could borrow some petrol. They thought he was mad to move anywhere that night, but lent him the
petrol and, after some fuss and bother, he managed to get the car started. By this time it was nearly midnight and all our neighbours, and their neighbours, had come out to see what the noise and
fuss was all about.

The travelling men thought it was a big joke, my father moving at that time of night, just because his woman said he had to, and my father was well aware that he was something of a laughing
stock.

To make matters worse, he still couldn’t get moving, because the churned-up ground had turned to thick mud and the motor wheels could not get a grip. So the men had to give him a push,
while he steered, practically all the way up the hill, to the level ground at the top, with the wheels slipping every few yards. We made it at last, accompanied by cheers, and as we got our vardo
jacked up again, we could hear the men’s laughter as they went back down the hill to their own caravans, calling out mocking goodnights to us. My father, tight-lipped, said nothing. He
refused the meal my mother offered him and, completely worn out, went straight to bed as soon as we were all settled.

The next day, when we looked out of the window, it was like looking down on a lake. There had been heavy rain in the night and the river had burst its banks. The whole of the site was flooded to
a depth of two or three feet. Portable lavatories, buckets, bowls, equipment, all the gear that would normally be kept outside was floating everywhere.

My mother didn’t say a word other than that she was going to help, and she waded in with the other women and helped them to salvage what goods they could. I clearly remember my father
saying to me, though I was only a child, ‘She’s always doing things like this and she’s always damn well right, bloody woman. She’s marvellous and I don’t know why I
argued with her. I suppose it was because I was so tired.’

This, and many other incidents like it, gave all of us a healthy respect for my mother’s clairvoyant powers – although we thought of it more as good judgement than anything mystical.
If our feelings tell us to act a certain way, we Romanies listen to them, especially when it comes to the well-being of the family, the most important thing to us. We children certainly learned not
to question Mummy as, in our minds at least, there was no one wiser than her.

FIFTEEN

Mummy had arranged with Aunt Vera to spend Christmas 1947 in Wisbech, behind a pub called the Dun Cow, whose landlord, Dick Barton, had agreed we could stay in his car park. He
but was very fond of our family and looked upon us as friends – Uncle Cardy in particular. I was in awe of him because I believed he was the very same ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’
whose adventures we listened to on the radio!

Our Romany Christmases were much like those of the gorgers, I suppose. We had our turkey, which we cooked in our Calor gas oven, and a Christmas pudding. We didn’t use holly as a
decoration, though, for that was considered unlucky. And we listened with interest to the King’s speech on the radio.

That Christmas, my father was sent shopping on his own in our car, with instructions from my mother on what and what not to buy. He came back from town and unloaded vast amounts of shopping,
mostly food, and I went to see if I could help. I opened the boot and saw a beautiful red bicycle inside, exactly what Nathan had asked for in the letter I had written for him to Father
Christmas.

It was the first moment that I had any doubt about there being a real Father Christmas, and it was heartbreaking. I remember thinking, desperately trying to come up with excuses, that perhaps
our parents did not know what Nathan had asked for and he would have two red bicycles on Christmas Day. But in my heart, I had guessed the truth. I slammed down the lid of the boot, looking around
to see if anyone had seen me, and then went back to the caravan, pretending I didn’t know.

Sure enough, there was only one bike laid at the foot of Nathan’s bed on Christmas morning. I had asked for a wristwatch and that was there too, but suddenly the magic had completely gone
out of Christmas. Later that day, I talked the whole thing over with Vera, who also had her suspicions. We agreed that my discovery proved the point: there was no Father Christmas. All these years,
we had been tricked!

We both went to my mother and asked her point blank. I think she knew I had found out because she made no attempt to cover up. She explained to us in simple words that it was the spirit of
Christmas which was the truth and which was important, not the various legends surrounding it. And she made us feel very important by telling us that, now we were grown up and knew about these
things, it would be up to us to keep the younger children as excited and happy as we had always been waiting for Father Christmas to visit us.

Soothed by her words, I was able to go outside and enjoy Christmas with all the other children, even though Vera and I exchanged a few knowing, grown-up glances at the antics of Nathan and
Vera’s little sisters Lavinia and Dixie and their tales of what Santa Claus had brought them. There is not much room in a traveller’s wagon for children to play with their toys and so,
however cold it is, any Romany site on Christmas Day is a mass of new, shiny toys and hordes of kids showing them off to each other, swapping them and shouting with excitement.

Most nights the men would adjourn to the public house while the children were being put to bed, but on Christmas Eve, as it was a special time, Aunt Vera and Mummy decided to go to the pub and
get crisps and lemonade for the children and a couple of bottles of Guinness for themselves.

At the pub, the landlady insisted they should have a drink with her, and so they had a cherry brandy each. Then they felt it would be impolite not to buy the landlady a drink in return, and so
they had another cherry brandy. And so on, until an hour and a half later, mindful that the men were waiting for them so they could go out, they returned to the vardos, full of good spirits in
every sense. I remember my father pacing up and down, getting angrier and angrier. I was thinking to myself, he goes to the pub every night and Mummy never does.

The waiting men were by then not exactly in the best of tempers and when my mother and Aunt Vera did return, breathing cherry-brandy fumes, the words flowed fast and the language was
picturesque. My father forbade my mother to come in and locked the door of the vardo to prevent her. This probably amused the men, but it didn’t amuse my mother. If he didn’t open the
door, she warned, she would put a brick through a window. Which she did! A brick through one of the glass windows of our brand-new, uninsured caravan!

The door was hastily opened but, by now, my mother’s blood was really up. She stormed into the vardo, picked up the turkey, which was our Christmas dinner for the next day, and heaved it
straight at the beautiful mirror which stood above the fireplace, shattering it. With a window broken, it turned out to be a freezing cold night. It needed to be, to cool that raging hot temper. We
learned that Uncle Cardy had been so angry that Aunt Vera had been drinking that he put his foot through the table.

Next day, they were all friends again. Everyone laughed at what had gone on, we children especially, and we made up a song for ourselves: ‘Up with the Turkey, Down with the Mirror, on with
the Fight’ to the tune of ‘Start the Day Right’. Even now, when we have a family get-together, we remind ourselves of that day by singing the turkey song.