The Girl in the Painted Caravan (22 page)

Discrimination against gypsies exists within the legal system. The Highways Act makes it a criminal offence for a gypsy (or a hawker or itinerant trader) to encamp on a highway. There are still
many prosecutions brought against us every year under this act. No wonder we don’t not consider the police our friends.

The myth of thieving gypsies is so strong, moreover, that the arrival of any group is often a signal for local criminals to get to work, knowing full well who will be the first targets of the
police. Being so often wrongly blamed, we do tend to have a good deal of sympathy with those who have the law on their tails.

I remember once a man arrived at our vardo late at night and my father invited him in. They had done some deals together in the past involving motorcars, and the man spoke a few words of our
language. After a few minutes of general chat, he told my father that the police were after him and he wanted somewhere to stay the night. We let him stay and, next morning, the man left early.
Later in the day, the police arrived, looking for him. They were told that nobody had seen him. I must emphasise that my father knew the man quite well and was convinced that it couldn’t have
been anything really bad he was mixed up in or he would have turned him away. The crime in this case was being in possession of some stolen tyres, or something like that. But my father knew that,
however minor the crime was, the full force of the law would be brought down on his friend regardless.

TWENTY-TWO

Like a thief in the night, adulthood crept up on me. One day I woke up and I was twenty-one. I touched the wall of the vardo next to my bed. It felt the same. In fact, as I
looked around, I saw nothing had changed. I felt disappointed. Life was just the same. I didn’t even feel any older. I wouldn’t have been so disappointed if I had known of the big party
that was planned for me, though, and even less so if I had known of the events that were going to change the course of my life before I saw my twenty-second birthday.

After two years in Seaton Carew we had moved to Northampton for a few months, and then on to a field near Wilby Lido, on the outskirts of the market town of Wellingborough. And there, thanks to
my father, we had become stuck again. He was now making a living selling Siemens vacuum cleaners and had a team of men who went door to door demonstrating them. My father argued that it was
becoming more and more difficult for travelling people like ourselves to find stopping places of any kind and so we should stay for a while.

It was a permanent site with an electricity supply, so we were able to wire up the caravan, and there were lots of other facilities as well. It was also very conveniently situated for us, in a
fairly densely populated part of the country, which meant my mother and I could go off hawking by car every day, always managing to find some place we hadn’t been before. We did quite well,
buying up job lots of nylon stockings, underwear and men’s socks to hawk. A lot of them were seconds and were very cheap, which meant we were able to make a good profit out of them.

I’d take the twins to the pool sometimes, and we’d sit and watch people swim, but I would never go in. For one thing, I was too self-conscious about my body to bare it in a swimming
suit and, more importantly, I’d been terrified of water since the day my father had thrown me in the sea. But one day, when there was no one else around, Nathan persuaded me to get into my
swimming suit and lie on his lilo while he pulled me around on the water. Feeling incredibly brave, I did, and it was lovely. Until a group of boys arrived, that is. Suddenly a frog landed on the
lilo next to my face. I shrieked, thrashing around trying to escape, and fell in! Nathan had to drag me spluttering out of the water. Never again, I vowed. Water and I did not mix.

On the day of my twenty-first birthday, I had a lot of presents – although one particularly special one I had to decline, at least for a while anyway. I remember Mummy bringing me in a cup
of tea and slowly taking a beautiful ring from her finger and putting it onto my skinny hand. When we were in Rhyl, Mummy had a particular client who would drive down to see her once a week without
fail, chauffeured by her son, Gerry, a strapping thirty-nine-year-old writer with great dress sense. Gerry wore a thick gold ring with a beautiful green stone in it on his little finger. He told us
that he had found the ring in the desert in Egypt when he was just twenty-one. One day he came by our vardo and told us that he was going to live abroad. When I returned from taking the twins out
for a walk, Gerry had gone and I’d missed the chance to say goodbye to him. But before I could allow myself to be sad about it, my attention was drawn to Gerry’s beautiful ring, which
was now on my mother’s hand.

‘You’ve got Gerry’s ring on,’ I said with surprise, wondering why he would have given Mummy something so precious to him. She smiled and said, ‘He asked me to look
after it for him.’

Now she was giving the ring to me.

‘What are you doing?’ I exclaimed.

‘Gerry wanted you to have this ring when you were twenty-one,’ Mummy replied. ‘He knew he would never have any children of his own and wanted the ring to go to a good
home.’ Gerry and I had always got on well; for some reason, he thought I was fabulous and used to say that if he’d ever had a daughter, he imagined she would have been just like me. But
I knew I couldn’t take the ring, as I was petrified of losing it. I didn’t feel responsible enough to look after something so special.

‘But he wanted you to have it,’ Mummy insisted.

I told her I would ask for it when I was ready for it, and she reluctantly agreed.

My main present from my family was to be my party, which they told me about over breakfast so I’d have the rest of the day to prepare myself. I had thought we might have a family party of
some kind, so it was a lovely surprise when they told me. Most girls celebrating their most important birthday would want to know well in advance so they could plan for it. But it really
didn’t bother me, since there was no one for me to invite anyway, apart from the family and people living in nearby vardos, who would all come along in any case.

But when my father told me he had booked a small hall in the town, I realised it was going to be a bigger turnout than I had expected. I guessed he was using the occasion to invite along a few
business acquaintances for a drink. My mother took me out that afternoon and bought me a cocktail dress which was very tight-fitting and had short sleeves and a low, square neck. It was in
turquoise and inky-black silk and, though I loved it, I would never have had the nerve to choose it for myself. It was the first dress I ever wore that I regarded as a real woman’s dress,
rather than a girl’s, and I wasn’t sure, looking in the full-length mirror, that I felt like a woman yet. It seemed very sexy, the kind of dress in which one needed to be cool,
confident and sophisticated, and I was certainly none of those things.

The ‘small hall’ turned out to be a very big club. My father was friendly with the owner and had arranged to take it over for the night. He had hired a group to play dance music for
us and there was a bar and tray after tray loaded with food.

The family party had become a reception for well over a hundred people, and there were lots of fellow travellers that we had met at different fairgrounds. But a lot of the people there did turn
out to be my father’s business friends. I never knew he had so many! Most of them were gorgers, of course, and I had to meet them all. I was polite to them, but I felt incredibly shy. The
guests I really wanted to see were my family, as they were the only ones I felt truly confident with.

At last they turned up, Aunt Vera, Uncle Cardy and their girls being first. Daisy looked absolutely beautiful in a tight-fitting brown dress and we ran into each other’s arms as soon as we
set eyes on each other. Her sister Honour, who looked just like Ava Gardner, arrived with my cousin Pam. Then came Cousin Johnny with his piano accordion, then my cousin Willy Taylor with his
sister Vera, and then a friend of my parents I called Aunt Olga with her husband, a lovely man who looked like a gangster from films of the Prohibition era. When I saw Olga, my heart sank. She
looked so magnificent that I was certain I had to look awful by comparison, especially as she was wearing the same dress as me, except hers was a more sophisticated pure black.

Aunt Lena arrived with her daughters, Vera and Lavinia, who were now making records professionally as the Hewett Sisters. My mother worked the crowd, looking marvellous in fine, black silk
crepe, all ruched and figure-hugging. Having all my most favourite people together under one roof, it felt almost like old times.

Naturally, everyone had to do their party piece. Cousin Johnny took up his piano accordion and played ‘K-K-K-Katy’, while Aunt Vera, in a black dress with jet beads sewn all round
the bottom, did a tap dance to it. Then Aunt Lena, who had the poise and husky voice of Marlene Dietrich, sang ‘You Made Me Love You’, which is one of our family favourites.

There was a gorger boy there called Jock Hall who had worked for my father at odd times, and he had a really wonderful voice. He sang with the band, and Vera and Lavinia pricked up their ears
immediately when they heard him start to sing. He began with ‘Mack the Knife’ and when he finished there was tremendous applause, led by the two girls. They went up to speak to him and,
within a few minutes, they had sorted out a number for the three of them to sing. As a trio, they were fantastic, so good that no one from the outside world would ever have believed they were
anything but a well-rehearsed, professional act. Jock Hall did, in fact, become professional. I got him his first engagement years later, and he went on to be a big draw at the clubs in the North
and the Midlands, where he sang under the name Nat Hall.

The party was really swinging by now, but some of us were feeling a bit inhibited because of the gorgers my father had invited. We just wanted to have a real family party. So my father, after
seeing my apprehension, told everyone we were finishing, but that the family would stay behind to clear up. Lots of the gorgers, who were really nice people, offered to help, but we managed to
persuade them that we would be able to manage on our own, and eventually they all left.

That was when we really got going! Nathan was first, playing his guitar. We nicknamed him Tommy Steele from then on because he bore such a striking resemblance to the star, with the same fair
hair. Although I say it myself, Nathan is the most marvellous guitar player, as good as anyone I’ve ever heard, which is amazing considering the fact that he only ever had a few informal
lessons.

One day, while sitting outside the vardo at Wilby Lido, Nathan was closely watching a man playing the guitar outside the wagon opposite. The man looked up, saw Nathan watching him and beckoned
him over. ‘Are you interested in the guitar?’

‘Yes,’ Nathan replied. ‘I’m getting a new one tomorrow.’

The man offered his guitar to Nathan. ‘Show me what you can do,’ he said. With this, Nathan set to work and showed the man all he knew. Two hours later, Nathan came back into the
vardo with a smile from ear to ear and showed us the new chords he had learned from the man. For the five days that were left of the man’s holiday, he taught Nathan what he knew and the two
could be heard ‘jamming’ into the early hours of the morning.

It turned out that the man was, in fact, Karl Denver of the Karl Denver Trio, and Nathan had been tutored by him for free from morning till night!

After Nathan played a few tunes on the guitar, somebody called out for me to tap dance, and I needed no encouragement. That went down well, or so it seemed to my slightly blurred mind, and then
Nathan and I were called upon to do our speciality. This was an arrangement of Autumn Leaves’, which we had worked out together; I sang some parts and then the guitar took over to play a
couple of passages.

Each of my aunts sang something in turn before my mother played ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ on the piano accordion. Then it was time for some dancing and everyone watched
spellbound as my mother and father glided across the dance floor. Things may not have been great between them at home, but they always looked like they were made for each other on the dance
floor.

I have no idea when the party came to an end because it was one of those fabulous evenings when time stands still. Whatever time it was, it was very late, but I remember not feeling remotely
tired. Although I woke up feeling still like a child at twenty-one, at twenty-one years and one day, I woke up feeling very old indeed!

A few weeks had passed since my birthday and we were still based near Wellingborough, although the site was largely empty. I could tell that Mummy was unhappy, as once again
she was unable to see clients and use her gift. But the more she went on to my father about joining her own people, the more determined he seemed to keep her away from them.

I was thoroughly on my mother’s side and I found it increasingly difficult to see her looking so sad and lost. My mother was the most important person in my life and I had seen her suffer
enough. I’d always been afraid to make a stand before now, but I too had had enough. I sat her down and suggested that if my father didn’t want to go back to our old way of life, then
we would do it without him.

I discussed it with my father too, telling him that not only was my mother unhappy, but so was I. I also told him that I was trying to force my mother to either go back to her own people with me
and the other children, or make a fresh start all together, doing what we did best. I could see from my father’s face that he knew I was very serious.

‘But I’m doing all right,’ he protested.

‘Yes, and you don’t get home until ten or eleven o’clock at night, while Mummy and I are sitting in a caravan in a field, looking after the twins on our own, without any of our
other family around,’ I cried. As long as you’re all right, Jack, I thought to myself. ‘Why don’t you buy the
World’s Fair?’
I suggested. I had never
challenged my father like this before. ‘Shall I go and get a copy now then?’