The Girl in the Painted Caravan (13 page)

‘I can’t, Mummy, I’m scared.’ And, believe me, I was petrified.

However, in the end, my parents got me into the car. ‘Do it for me, do what I couldn’t,’ my mother had said, looking me squarely in the eye, and that had done it.

When we reached the door of the school, my mother asked to see whoever was in charge. A rather tired-looking man sat us in an office, all the while looking at me with puzzlement on his face. Was
I already standing out so much? I thought to myself, and the butterflies again began to flutter inside my tummy. He left the room and, within a few moments, one of the largest men I have ever seen
in my life entered the office. He had a voice like a foghorn.

‘Yes, yes?’ he said with urgency and slight irritation in his voice. You could see from the way he was acting that he was a very busy man and we were obviously encroaching on his
valuable time. ‘How can I help you people?

Mummy explained the situation to him: ‘I want my daughter to attend your school.’ He had been shuffling his papers into a semblance of order, but now he stopped what he was doing and
sat stock-still, staring first at my mother and then at me. The broadest grin washed over his face. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘You want your daughter to come to our
school?’

My mother stiffened in her seat and I could see that she was ready to challenge anything he said about me not being fit to attend his fancy school. ‘We would love to have your daughter
come to our school,’ he said, now slouching back into his chair. I could see from his demeanour that he was in fact trying to put my mother at ease, not challenge her. There was something in
his manner, however, that told me he was also enjoying the situation.

‘The only problem I have, or that she might have—,’ he started.

‘Yes, yes?’ my mother asked, with urgency in her voice.

‘Is that this, my dear, is an all-boys school.’

With that, the twinkle in my mother’s eye returned and we all burst out laughing, including the headmaster. That was my first and last day at school. I never wore my fancy uniform
again.

I didn’t give up on my ambition to learn to read and write, though, and my parents never objected, although Daddy didn’t have the time or inclination to teach me himself. When they
were both away working, they used to hire gorger girls to look after me and I always made them read to me, either comics or the Bible – an odd combination, I know, but these were what I liked
to hear. Most of them hated this, especially as I wanted everything explained. They either got absorbed in the comics or bored with the Bible, but whichever way, I was a nuisance to them, not only
because they had to read to me, but because I wanted words that I didn’t know pointed out to me so that I could learn the outline of their shapes. These shapes I used to copy out laboriously.
I had a secret place for all my papers: an old brass coal scuttle with battle scenes embossed on it. This was my own desk where I could keep my personal things.

Sometimes the girls used to try to get out of reading to me. They would rather take me for walks, where they might get the chance to meet a boy. But I would have none of that and, if they
didn’t do as I wanted and help me learn to read and write, I would threaten to tell stories about them to my mother and get them the sack. I was a little monster, I know, but determined to
learn somehow.

They never had to put up with me for too long as we continued to travel around, going wherever we felt might be profitable for us. My father was always trying different businesses and once, when
we were near Wisbech, he noticed that the roads were being dug up and tarmacked, the workers discarding the wood blocks that had been used in their original construction. He picked up one of the
blocks, out of curiosity, and brought it home to see how well it would burn. It burned beautifully and so, while the supply lasted, we went into the firewood business, my father buying up the whole
lot from the council at a dirt-cheap price.

One of our favourite stopping places was in the yard of a pub called the Ship at Boston, a market town surrounded by flat fenland which was near the coast and had a busy port. The pub was set
right on the river and I could see the trawlers come in. The fishermen used to keep their gear in the old stables at the back of the Ship and I loved to watch them repairing their nets, their
nimble fingers plucking at the net as though it were a musical instrument, the long, sharp needle, shaped like a cheese slice, sparkling and weaving in and out at a fast pace.

We spent a Christmas there when my father rented one of the Ship’s stables for a new enterprise. He had learned how to make toys, and with the aid of two pleasant young gorger fishermen,
Bob and Jack, turned out hundreds of wooden Mickey Mouse figures, brightly painted and varnished, which he then sold in Boston market.

The two boys were in their early twenties, I suppose, and really nice to me. When they discovered that I was teaching myself to read and write, they helped me and taught me the alphabet in their
breaks, which none of the gorger girls who looked after me had ever bothered to do. They also showed me how to join up my letters when writing and during those few weeks over Christmas, I really
managed to grasp what it was all about.

Daddy did so well with these toys that we had a very merry Christmas with the proceeds. With my new writing skills, I had carefully inscribed – in very big letters, in case he was
short-sighted – our notes to Father Christmas. These had been put on the open fire in the vardo and the ashes had been drawn up the chimney and scattered into the night sky to find their way
to the dark and distant land where Father Christmas lived.

As well as new clothes, I received notebooks, pens and pencils to help me with my studies. That was when the family gave me the nickname Bookworm. I was always getting told off for eating and
reading at the same time – usually after Nathan had grassed on me!

But I often had to snatch moments when I could sit and learn, as my days were full of other things. As well as my usual chores, by the time the war ended I was being trained in palm-reading and
clairvoyance. I’d already gone out with Granny on her calls, mostly to keep me out of the mischief I always seemed to get into, but also so that she could teach me. I could be useful too.
There was more than one client who, to put it mildly, was difficult to get away from. While my grandmother was always willing to give help and advice when it was needed, there were some clients who
always wanted to prolong the visits, endlessly discussing their problems down to the last detail. Since Granny had no time for this, I would promptly be trotted out as the excuse to leave.

With the war over, the fairgrounds were opening again, so there were plenty of places for us to travel to, and both Granny and my mother had dukkering booths at the amusement park in Skegness. I
used to look after the waiting room for my mother, just to make sure no one stole anything or tried to listen to the client ahead of them. I’d also fetch her cups of tea from the café
next door, as well as keeping an eye on the girl who was employed to look after Nathan, who seemed to me to be a real little monster. It seems strange, looking back, to think that before too long
our roles were reversed and he had to look after me, chaperoning his sister whenever she went out, in the true Romany tradition.

When we were together, Honour would give Daisy, Vera and myself palm-reading sessions. This consisted of learning the lines of the hands and studying the shape, size, colour and texture. We
couldn’t read each other easily, as we knew what each other wanted and that stood in the way of what we saw. Honour would cover our hands with mud or lipstick and then press them onto paper
so that she never knew whose palm she was studying.

As time went on, the clairvoyant sense inside me continued to develop, even though I was unaware of it. Sometimes, while with my grandmother, I would say things like, ‘Mummy wants me to
get her some tea from the café,’ or ‘I’d better go now because Mummy wants to go home,’ quite without thinking. It never occurred to me to ask myself how I knew these
things. I just knew.

I used to study the clients, even at a young age, and ask my mother questions like ‘Why is that lady going to hospital?’ or ‘Will they be all right when they go to
Australia?’ without ever knowing why I did. This may sound rather weird, but it is accepted in Romany life. Nobody patted me on the head and told me what a clever little girl I was.

I was seven years old when I was first asked to make a prediction for a client. We were at an air show and several of the young airmen came into the caravan where my mother was
giving readings. There was one young man who asked my mother if the kid who was looking at him could read hands. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘tell me what you see, kid!’

I looked down into his hands with interest, trying to seem as mature and serious as possible. The next thing I knew, my stomach turned over and I felt sick and dizzy. I ran out of the caravan as
fast as I could and hid.

The next day one of the other airmen came to see my mother and quietly told her that the pilot had been killed.

FOURTEEN

I remember the beginning of 1947 vividly. It was a long, harsh winter. If I breathed hard enough against the vardo window, I could melt the snow that had drifted across it,
look outside and see the world all white and still. We were in the yard of the Ship at Boston, a regular stopping place for my family when we were in the area. We had arrived just in time, before
the deep snow came.

Within days, we were cut off from the town by drifts more than three feet in depth which blocked the roads and marooned all traffic. The reflection from the white carpet of snow was bright
enough to hurt the eyes. The only relief was the steel grey of the sky above it. The milkman who supplied the pub would leave our milk outside the vardo and when I’d open the door to bring
the bottles in, I’d see the cream on top had frozen, expanded and pushed through the cardboard bottletop. One of my perks was to eat this delicious ice cream.

Gorgers who live in houses have no idea of the comforts of a vardo, which can be warm and cosy in the hardest of weather, as there aren’t a dozen doors and twice as many windows through
which the winds can creep, no floorboards or skirtings to let in the draughts, no brick walls for damp to rise up, nor slates that can leak. We were warm as toast for the first few days after the
snow settled.

My parents were worried, though, for no one had forecast that the weather would turn as vicious as it had. Outside, it may have been as pretty as a picture on a Christmas card, but the yard tap
had frozen solid and was unusable. The pub’s taps had frozen too and my father helped the landlord lag the pipes to get the water trickling through them again.

So far as fuel for the stove was concerned, we only carried enough to last us for a few days at a time, especially when on the move, for the lighter our burden the better. Our lighting was
supplied by Calor gas, which also fuelled the oven. We normally kept the Calor gas tank outside, for safety, but that particular winter it froze up and my father had to bring it inside the vardo.
The level of gas was low, with no more than six hours’ left.

If the gas ran out, we could cook on top of the stove and use candles for lighting, but we only had a bucketful of anthracite left. It was impossible to beg, borrow or buy fuel from anyone
because the bad weather had set in so suddenly that everyone had been caught out. If anyone had laid in a good stock of fuel, they were certainly not admitting it.

Because of the deep drifts, there were no deliveries to the town and none were made out of it. We were clothed warmly enough, though, and the big pot of stew which my mother kept going all the
time on top of the stove made sure that we were kept warm from the inside as well. We must have been there for about five days. The people from the public house kept us supplied with provisions,
but both my parents knew that these supplies would begin to dwindle if the weather didn’t change.

The nearest coal yard was more than two miles away and the road to it was iced over and not only undriveable, but also practically unwalkable. But my father knew that he had to make the journey
somehow. So over his normal winter clothes, he put on an extra pair of socks and another thick pullover. He never wore gloves and so did not have any. My mother tried to get him to wear a pair of
hers, but they just wouldn’t fit. So, with his hands in the pockets of his Crombie overcoat, he went out into the freezing cold, smiling cheerfully to us as he went through the gate that led
to the road.

I stayed by the window, expecting him back any moment. My mother, who knew it would be a hard journey for him, tried to get me interested in my books and pencils, or the new jigsaw puzzle they
had bought for me, but I refused to leave my place. It seemed as though I waited for hours and hours and indeed it must have been that long, for the bright snow dulled as grey as the sky and
darkness crept in. When it started to snow again, Mummy joined me at the window and we took turns to rub away the steam caused by our breath, watching through the finger-smeared glass for a figure
at the gate which was now just a grey shadow we could hardly make out.

There was only a glimmer of light left when we saw a hunchbacked figure appear in the distance. He was doubled over with the weight of a whole sack of coke on his back and he approached the
caravan at a snail’s pace. My mother ran out and dragged him into the caravan, sack and all, for the two could not be parted; the sack was frozen to his hands and he couldn’t let it
go.

The kettle had been kept on and off the boil for hours, ready to make him mugs of steaming hot tea on his return, and my mother poured the hot water onto a towel and massaged his hands with it,
so he could pull them away from the neck of the sack. His face was absolutely grey, his eyes closed, there was snow on his eyelashes and his eyebrows and his hair; he looked like an old, old
man.

He couldn’t move to help himself and she had to struggle to get him out of his overcoat, then sit him down and pull off his shoes and socks. She stuck his feet in a bowl of hot water and,
as he slowly warmed to life, she ran across to the pub to get him some brandy. With a good measure of that inside him, and about half a gallon of hot tea, he came back to something like normal
again, but he had a hot ache in his feet and hands which stayed with him for some time afterwards.