The Girl in the Painted Caravan (6 page)

There were other travelling people who had concessions in the park too, and as the girls stood by the door of the palmistry place, lots of young men would naturally hang around and try to chat
them up. Their brothers would do shifts, making sure that no one looked at their sisters in the wrong way – and that their sisters weren’t eyeing up the boys either! Such behaviour was
definitely a no-no.

The boys were also busy earning a living taking photographs, having bought two Aptus cameras, one of the first instant cameras. Set on tripods, they took sepia photographs which developed in
only two to three minutes. Alger and Nathan kept themselves busy doing this and charged a shilling a picture.

I’m sure that being attractive young men definitely helped when it came to persuading the women to have their photographs taken. Nathan, the eldest, was tall and debonair, with a slightly
quizzical grin, and was often likened to the actor Rudolph Valentino. Alger looked similar to Nathan and many would say not dissimilar to Ronald Coleman, although not quite as tall. Twinkling eyes
gave the impression to those he met that he was keeping some sort of a secret. He was as opinionated as his sister Adeline, but they never had an argument. Disagreements and banter, yes, but no big
fall-outs. Now that he was older, he often joined his father in the public house and had already earned himself the nickname ‘the Fish’ because he could drink so much and could actually
hold it. This was not something his mother was proud of, however.

Walter, who was by now about fifteen, was a quiet lad who had inherited a more respectable nickname: Lavengro, which means scholar. He was noted for his good use of herbs and, along with his
father, was always in demand by local farmers to tend to their sick horses. An animal will often know which herb or plant to eat to make itself better if it has bellyache and Walter also seemed to
know what would work, even when the best vet in town had given up.

The atmosphere in the park was frenetic and it was an incredibly noisy place, with the carousel blasting out ‘Blaze Away’ and popular tunes of the day, which were all fast-paced in
order to add to the excitement. The barkers on the stalls would yell out, ‘Win a lovely coconut! Throw a double top to win a tanner!’ The excited screams from children and the people on
the roller coaster and the waltzer, together with the smell of hot dogs and candy floss, added to the unforgettable atmosphere. My family would always talk about the pure exhilaration they felt
simply walking from stall to stall. It was an incredibly exciting place to be.

The shops of Skegness also held great joy for the girls, who now had money in their pockets. They could pick out and buy their own clothes and would often buy material to make copies of dresses
and suits they had seen on their frequent trips to the movies. They would use Vaseline on their eyelids, mixed with a tiny bit of soot from the fire in the vardo. This resulted in a glossy shadow
which made their eyes look enormous. A little lipstick, topped with Vaseline, made their lips glossy and would also be used as rouge for their cheeks. This was all done out of the sight of the boys
or their father, who would never have approved.

Throughout that first summer, the girls, all of whom were undeniably beautiful, were attracting many admirers. Alice had instructed them not to encourage the attentions of the gorger boys.
‘Do not make eye contact. If someone is looking at you, look the other way!’ she said. ‘If you give a man any encouragement, you’ll never get rid of him.’

The brothers had made friends with some of the boys who worked in the amusement park and other traders, and they were full of news about the dance hall and the live band music played there. Much
as they and their sisters longed to go, they were wary of approaching their parents about it, fearing that they would never approve. They weren’t supposed to talk to the gorgers, let alone
dance with them! Adeline and Nathan plotted together over how best to persuade their parents, deciding to say they didn’t need to dance with the gorgers as they had each other.

Much to their surprise, when they did approach their parents, Naughty and Alice gave their permission, albeit with some very strong dos and don’ts. The girls all loved dancing because it
was in their Romany blood, but that’s all they were given parental consent for: to dance – with their brothers. They were not to start chatting with gorger boys and they were certainly
not allowed to date them. The horror of the idea was sufficient for dire warnings to be unnecessary. The girls were to be shadowed closely by their minders/brothers. They were never told whether
the boys got the same instructions about gorger girls, but there wasn’t much they could do anyway, with four attractive sisters in their care.

When the time came to attend the first dance, they could not believe the difference between live music and the recorded kind. They danced to songs such as ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’,
‘Somebody Loves Me’ and ‘You’re the Cream in My Coffee’. The evening went so very quickly and soon they were on their way home, making plans for their next visit with
great anticipation. Freedom at last! At least, it was to them.

The gorger boys must have been puzzled, to say the least, by the girls’ initial consistent refusals of all offers. But on later visits the girls did not always refuse and their brothers
would prop up the bar and enjoy a few drinks, keeping their own company, which suited them just fine. Besides, they did sometimes manage a dance with the gorger girls. They had an agreement –
we won’t tell if you don’t.

It never went further than a dance, though, even if once or twice the girls tried to escape their chaperones. Even in those considerably less permissive days, a boy would have felt uncomfortable
at the idea of having a big brother breathing down his neck while walking a girl home. Their companions were always warned off with the threat of grim retribution in the event of any romantic
attachment. The would-be Romeos were undoubtedly left discouraged.

And so it went on throughout that summer. When the season drew to a close, there were some heavy hearts on board the vardos as they left Skegness behind them. They compensated for it by
reassuring each other that in six months they would return to the hustle and bustle that they had enjoyed. With a taste for their new-found freedom, it was going to seem like a long six months.

Alice realised that with this new way of life, travelling less, it would be sensible to buy a plot of land that her family and other Romany people who visited them could pull onto. Not far from
Skegness was another of their usual stopping grounds, the Lamb and Flag in the village of Whaplode, and near to the pub was an old bakery which was up for sale. Alice, who was very religious,
thought this was a gift from God. She had always been a canny old bird who saved, not squandered, what she earned, so she promptly made a deal and bought it.

She also realised something else: the wagons were cumbersome and bender tents were now a thing of the past, while there were all kinds of new vardos that gorger people were taking to which were
pulled by cars and not horses. When she brought up the idea of switching to this new mode of transport, the boys were quite excited, as travelling wouldn’t take as long and it’s every
boy’s dream to own a car. Alice made arrangements for all of the boys to have driving lessons and, as they knew a lot of people in Whaplode, some of whom already had cars, there was no
problem when it came to practising.

She bought three modern aluminium caravans: one for the boys, one for the older girls and one for her and Naughty, but also kept the Romany Reading vardos, which meant so much to them all, as
permanent quarters on the old bakery site.

So they had finally made some roots for their family, for the very first time in their long history. It was both scary and exciting; so many aspects of their way of life seemed to be changing,
and they all wondered what further changes were waiting round the corner for them.

SIX

‘No Gypsies’ was a sign the family were starting to see more and more in pub yards, where traditionally travellers would have been allowed to stay. The 1930s was a
time of tension in the country and it was no longer safe to turn up at a place where some people may not know you. The industrial areas of Britain had already been through a recession in the 20s,
but Lincolnshire was agricultural land, growing flowers and vegetables that were delivered all over the country. It wasn’t the first county to be hit by problems, but it couldn’t escape
forever. Things became worse after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression. In Britain the effects lasted until at least 1933, with long dole queues in some parts of the country.
Many people were literally begging for food. Suddenly, the Romany way of life began to look more and more appealing, for they were free and independent, and many gorgers around this time decided
that they too would take to the road. Many came down from the Welsh hills, desperate to find a way of surviving. They would go from door to door selling things, begging and pretending to read
hands.

For these gorgers, living on the road was not as easy or romantic as they had expected. Some of these people degenerated into thieves and con artists, owed rent to farmers and spoiled the
countryside, leaving litter and rubbish at the stopping places. Not all of them, but some of them. It only took a few to spoil things for the real Romanies, though, as people were unable, or
unwilling maybe, to distinguish between Romanies and other gypsies, including their own gorger kind. Many people decided that we were all ‘dirty gypsies’.

Some of these new travellers would get drunk and start fights in pubs, so landlords became wary of allowing travellers to pull in to their yards and, of course, the residents of the towns and
villages became more cautious. Farmers no longer welcomed them due to the bad state non-Romanies were now leaving their land in. ‘Hedge crawlers’ and ‘dirty gypos’ were
phrases heard more and more often.

The old romantic idea of the gypsy was dying fast. Scrap metal had become a gypsy trade by this time and their stopping grounds often looked more like salvage yards. This all contributed to the
notion of gypsies being dirty and anti-social, and the resentment people felt very quickly began to turn to hatred.

Naughty and Alice became more and more concerned by this growing hostility. By 1933 they had a teenage family, as well as Shunty, who was five, and they did not want their children, at an
impressionable age, to be unduly affected by it. This, I am sure, was the reason for the change in their way of life. They must have known then that their children would never live in the
traditional Romany way, as their parents and grandparents had done, and that it was time for them to start making changes.

Alice and Naughty now had a wintering place to stay. The vardos towed by horses would draw in for the winter months at Spalding. Although Alice still owned the bakery site at Whaplode, she
allowed other travellers to pull onto it, as it was a little bit out in the sticks and Spalding was rather like their home town to them. Travelling was impossible in the winter months because of
the weather. Money was short and life was hard.

The family stayed in a field behind the eighteenth-century Red Lion pub and hotel in Spalding’s marketplace. Fairground and circus families would also stay for the winter in nearby
Weldon’s car park, and they would all swap stories about some of the less reputable characters taking to the roads. One of Granny’s favourites was the story of a family of confidence
tricksters. This story went round all the travelling communities, but nobody we met had actually encountered them. It goes like this.

The story was about a man called Thomas, his wife Becky and their beautiful daughter Diana. It is said that the couple were once in the theatre, but came to put their acting talent to a less
reputable use. Apparently, they could only visit a place once, never to return, although they earned a very good living in return for paying this price.

They would call in to a new town or village, whereupon Becky would go to all the shops, obtain credit by false pretences and leave with food, clothes, anything she could get. This was her job,
so to speak. Meanwhile, Thomas would advertise in the local paper to sell their wagon. When prospective buyers came to look at it, he would offer it at a very cheap price, to ensure a quick sale.
He would take deposits from at least six or seven people and sometimes, if he could get away with it, even the full amount. He used to tell them that his brother was delivering a new wagon to him
the following day or so and that he would need to hand over the cash, promising them that he would move all his goods into the new wagon and then bring the wagon they would be buying to where they
lived. He would give them a receipt, signed with a false name, of course. That’s how he did his bit.

The daughter, Diana, was in her early twenties and a stunning-looking girl with beautiful big green eyes. She knew how to dress and make the most of herself. Her speciality was to become
engaged, and she could sometimes hook a man in just one or two days. The object here, of course, was the ring. Diana would first find her mark, which was easy for her, especially in small villages,
as the males did not often see a woman swanning around looking like a film star, all high heels, beautifully done nails and well-coiffured hair. Some said that she’d been at this lark since
she was about fifteen. One thing she did
not
do, from what we heard, was sleep with her victims.

Once she’d hooked her victim with her stunning looks, it was child’s play to get him to ask her out. She would complain about her strict father and how unhappy she was. It
wasn’t long before the victims would be under her spell and feeling very protective. She would shyly confess to them that she had fallen immediately in love. As soon as she had the chap
conditioned, she would lead him to the nearest jeweller’s to pick out a ring, varying the price depending on the wealth of the man involved.