by Cj Flood
I shook Frosties into a bowl, and shoved them into my mouth, not caring when I dripped milk on myself. Maybe I was gross, but why did he have to go on about it? His whole bedroom smelt like cheese and biscuits but I never said anything about that.
In the afternoon, Dad came home from wherever he’d been, looking stressed. He’d found out that he was allowed to evict the gypsies himself as long as he used no more than ‘reasonable force’, which he said as if it was a foreign food of which he was very suspicious.
‘And what about all those blasted kids?’ he said. ‘How am I supposed to go about it? Bet that’s the only reason they have the little bleeders.’
Sam laughed.
The police and the council could help, but they weren’t in any rush, seeing as how the gypsies would just end up somewhere else illegal.
‘So, what happens then?’ I said, and he shook his head, tired suddenly.
‘Exactly,’ he said, rubbing at his beard. ‘What happens?’
The beard was new. I couldn’t get used to it. His chin had a cleft, like the tiniest bum. I missed seeing it.
His plan was to go down there and act as if he was giving them the chance to leave before things got messy.
Sam scoffed.
‘What?’ Dad snapped.
‘D’you really think that’s gonna work?’
‘I really think you should shut your face.’
Sam stared at Dad for a few seconds then slouched out of the kitchen.
Dad watched him go. ‘Blasted boy.’
Upstairs, Sam’s bedroom door slammed.
A few weeks ago, a letter had come from Sam’s form tutor. Stapled to it was a receipt for a pair of football boots that Sam swore he hadn’t thrown onto the swimming pool roof. He’d only even been in school to take his Art exam.
I’d snuck a look at the letter when Dad was making tea. I’m concerned about the shift in Samuel’s behaviour, Mr Starkey had written. Has anything changed at home?
Ha.
It wasn’t the first time Sam had been in trouble. Or the worst time. A few months earlier, just before he left for study leave, Dad had been called in to see Sam’s Head of Year, Miss Ryan, because apparently Sam had started a fight with Benjy. His best friend. The two of them had been sent home, and Sam had been told not to take his place at Sixth Form for granted. I couldn’t believe it. He’d always been so good till now.
Benjy had been Sam’s best friend since they were babies. Benjy’s mum, Tess, and our mum had pulled their beds together in the maternity ward. They’d made each other godmothers! And then Sam had split Benjy’s lip.
Dad still hadn’t forgiven him. He swore under his breath, and walked out the kitchen. He was going to confront the gypsies, I could tell.
I ran upstairs to watch. Sam came out his room to see what was going on. He was excited in spite of himself, and I smiled at him. His mood changes were ridiculous.
‘Best seat in the house.’ He grinned, bringing the dimple out in his left cheek. He jostled me out of Dad’s armchair. I let him win, propping myself on the arm instead.
We watched Dad walk across the yard, with Fiasco beside him, tail wagging. The sun was high above their heads. Around the fire, the mum, dad and the bloke with the enormous chin were talking. The men’s faces looked red and windblown like Dad’s, and I thought they must work outside too.
The four little kids sat nearby in the overgrown grass, trying to hit each other’s hands in a game of Slaps. They looked mucky and wild and I wanted to be out there with them. There was no sign of the boy or the dogs. Sometimes, at the weekend, they stayed away all day. I opened the window, but the air outside was so hot it didn’t make any difference.
Seeing Dad, the two gypsy men stood. The red-haired woman walked away, towards the brook. She held her hands out behind her and the four little ones followed, catching at her fingers.
‘They’re scared,’ Sam said, and I couldn’t quite tell if he was being sarcastic.
Dad was only metres away now.
‘If they try anything, I’ll leg it down there.’
I laughed.
‘You think I wouldn’t?’
‘I think you shouldn’t. They’d kill you!’
He glared at me, angry again suddenly.
‘They’re not going to fight anyway. Look, they’re talking,’ I said.
Sam bunched his hands into fists, as if he were ready for action, and I thought how sometimes being a boy made you act like a moron.
The gypsy dad folded his arms while our dad talked, making his broad shoulders swell. The man had a big belly and, standing with his chest out, his body pulled at his checked shirt. I wanted Dad to come inside.
‘D’you think they’ll listen?’ I asked.
Sam blew air through his teeth in a kind of laugh. ‘Do you?’
The gypsy dad was talking now. He’d relaxed his arms at his sides, as if flaunting his muscles for a few seconds was enough. He met Dad’s eye and shrugged, and the bloke with the chin did the same beside him.
Dad held his hands out, and I could imagine him saying, all abrupt, ‘Well. I gave you the chance.’
Walking back, Dad’s face was dark as he looked at the ground. His mouth moved as he muttered to himself. Seeing us, he jabbed his finger at the air.
We ran downstairs.
Fiasco entered the house first, belting into the kitchen, mouth open in a grin.
‘Bastards!’ Dad said.
‘What happened?’ Sam and I asked together.
Dad picked the phone up and dialled.
The engaged tone throbbed out of the receiver.
I sat next to Sam on the bench by the table, while Dad flicked through the first pages of the phone book. He dialled again then slammed the phone down.
‘Jesus, Iris!’ he burst out. ‘Can you pack that in?’
‘What?’
‘That bloody foot.’
I flattened my heel to the floor.
‘Haven’t you got owt to do?’ he asked us.
Sam said he was going out, and I waited for Dad to remind him he was grounded, but he only said, ‘Well? What you waiting for?’
Sam dodged out the house happily.
For the rest of the afternoon I lay in bed, reading Dad’s book about dragonflies and drawing pictures: slashed greyhounds with bladed paws, and caravans so full of people that limbs shattered through windows. I didn’t see what the big deal was: the paddock wasn’t being used, not really, except for the occasional dropping off or collecting of logs. So what?
Dad knocked a couple of times, making sure I hadn’t died on his watch. That wouldn’t exactly help prove to Mum that he knew how to look after us. Even when he called me, I didn’t answer. I wanted him to feel bad. All he ever did was snap at me. He never did the shopping. We hadn’t been for a big walk in weeks.
He left a jacket potato with melted cheese and fried onions in the Aga for me, and I sneaked out to eat it when the house was quiet. I fell asleep early and dreamed of being attacked by a stranger with a golf ball in a sock.
Monday night, Mum rang as usual and, as usual, Sam and Dad were nowhere to be seen. This time at least, I had something to say. I told her about the gypsies, and Sam’s and Dad’s reactions, and the stories I’d heard at school, and it was the longest conversation we’d had since she left.
‘They just want to be free, Iris,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I said, even though it hadn’t occurred to me.
When I’d finished, she told me that the Transit was holding up well, that she’d sent us a present each, and that she was halfway around the Mediterranean coast. The water was clearer than in Kos, she said; Sam and I would love it.
‘One day we’ll do it together,’ she said, and I made some vague kind of noise because I could just imagine how Dad would feel about that, left behind at Silverweed Farm.
‘Be careful, won’t you?’ she said, when we were saying goodbye. ‘Give them a chance, but be careful too.’
�
��Course,’ I said, but I wasn’t listening. I was too excited.
I didn’t need Sam to formulate a plan, and I didn’t have to do what anyone told me. I was free, and tomorrow I would watch to see if the boy took his rucksack and the dogs across the brook again.
If he did, I would follow him.
Three
I planned to head straight down to the paddock – no indoor spying preliminaries; I couldn’t risk waking Dad again – then I’d creep through the pig farmer’s land adjacent to ours and watch the gypsies from there. If the boy headed off in the same direction as usual, I could dash across the stepping stones me and Sam had put down in the spring, and get on his tail.
I was shiny and full of myself as I pulled on yesterday’s clothes. Mum’s running shorts needed washing, but I couldn’t face it. I was superstitious about cleaning her away for good. A fat Fiasco-print pawed the left bum cheek, and an orange stain patterned the white drawstring. I sniffed it. Beans. Matty would not approve. Climbing over the pig farmer’s gate, I wondered what dry-cleaning actually meant, and if it was something I should consider.
The pig farm was separated from the paddock by a willow- and alder-lined ditch, which I crawled along until the caravans came into view. On the way, I bumped into our cat, Maud. Prowling through the grass with her nose to the ground and shoulder blades sliding under ginger fur, she looked wild and dangerous, and I wondered what was about to die in her claws. I copied her movements.
The gypsies’ voices travelled from the caravans, and it was funny to hear them, like hearing your fridge magnet speak: something you hadn’t considered. The mum was high-pitched and talked constantly as she rinsed plates in a basin, though I couldn’t make out a word. The dad was silent. Hunched over on a white plastic patio chair, he laced his work boots. I couldn’t see the boy yet. He must still be in inside. He never left earlier than this.
As I drew in, I realised the woman was singing. Her voice was soft and sweet, and I could see the way her hair changed from dark red at the roots to ginger at the ends, and that she was younger than I first thought – younger even than Mum. Green eyeliner surrounded her eyes, which were big and turned up at the outsides, and silver glittered on her ankle as she walked barefoot to empty suds from the washing-up bowl into a patch of nettles by the brook. She wore a long pale denim skirt with a V cut out the front so you could see her thighs, and even though I didn’t recognise her song I could tell a lot of the notes were off.
The baby on her back started crying, and she stopped what she was doing and sang louder, swivelling from side to side, reaching with one hand to pat the baby’s bum. The man didn’t seem to notice them, just kept lacing his boots. I was metres away now, separated only by the ditch and the tall alder I hid behind. Its trunk was straight and draped with moss, and cones lay all around like tiny keeled-over dormice. The ground was soft, and I decided it didn’t matter if the boy had already gone; I would watch the rest of them instead. I lay down in the long grass and peered around the tree trunk.
‘Freeze,’ a voice said, very close behind me.
I felt something cool and flat and heavy on my back.
‘Get off,’ I hissed, trying to roll out from under it.
The foot stepped down, and I turned around to see its owner.
The gypsy boy.
I stood up, brushing off dried blades of grass and a couple of ants. He was nearly half a foot taller than me, and on closer inspection maybe not quite so old as my brother. His jeans were faded and rolled up to below the knee, and he wore flip-flops rather than trainers, unlike the boys at school. He pulled my arm, leading me towards Silverweed.
‘What you doing? Get off me!’
‘Don’t want me da to see,’ he said. His voice was soft and husky and he spoke much faster than I’d imagined. He had an Irish lilt, but not like I’d heard before. I breathed in, but couldn’t detect cat piss, just wood smoke.
‘Well, don’t go that way,’ I said. ‘My dad’ll kill me and all.’
I dropped cross-legged to the ground, and he did the same. Cow parsley nodded above our heads.
‘Not allowed to mix with the likes of us, I’m sure . . .’
I curled my lip at him, the way Sam did to me lately. ‘You’re the one hiding.’
‘Oh aye, we know what your da thinks of us . . .’
I lay back, embarrassed. It was nothing to do with me.
Maud caught up then. No sign of the maiming and murdering she’d been attempting. She purred and rubbed her head against me, then him. No loyalty whatsoever. He petted her, digging his fingers in behind her ears, and she closed her eyes.
‘So?’ he said. ‘What were you doing?’
I stared at Maud, who purred loudly, and wondered how much to tell.
‘Your da send you?’
That made me laugh. ‘I was going to follow you,’ I admitted. ‘Wanted to see where you went.’
‘How d’you know I go anywhere?’ he said, and there was the slightest hint of his being impressed, so I looked blank, holding on to my mystery, but then he laughed, and told me he’d been spying on me too. Amazed by his openness, I asked him straight out.
‘So? Where d’you go then?’
‘I’ll show you, if you want,’ he said, and I looked indifferent, but butterflies were hatching in my stomach.
Still cautious of our dads, we army-crawled the length of the ditch, away from Silverweed, past the caravans, to where the pig farmer’s land dipped to meet the brook. Brambles and nettles grew thicker as we approached, and as the grass turned to silt and pebbles, we no longer had to be careful.
‘Didn’t realise these were here,’ the boy said, jumping across the stepping stones at the end of the pig farmer’s field. ‘I’ve been getting soaked.’
I didn’t respond. I was remembering Mum standing here in March. It was the first warm day of the year, and we were showing her what we’d built. Walking across, she’d caught her shoe and fallen in. When Sam laughed, she pulled him in with her. I’d jumped in myself, not wanting to be the odd one out, and we’d sat in the freezing cold brook watching the waterboatmen paddling over the surface, trying to catch the bull fish we knew hid under the rocks.
The boy held his hand out to me from the Ashbourne side of the stepping stones, and he was standing precisely where she had; smiling, wringing the water from her long dark blonde hair.
‘What’s your name anyways?’ the boy asked.
‘Iris.’
I left his hand to dangle as I landed with a squelch on the wet bank.
‘Trick.’
I waited, confused.
‘My name’s Trick. Too many Paddys at the old camp.’
We climbed the bank, stepping over convolvulus and ferns and the garbled roots of an ancient oak to the boundary of the Ashbourne Estate, which was a mixture of farmland and National Trust. Two rows of barbed wire surrounded a maize field that stretched on for miles.
Trick held the top wire to make it easier for me to climb through.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Your hair’s caught.’
I yanked my head, leaving a dark brown curl of hair trapped inside the metal knot.
‘Christ,’ he winced. ‘Did that not hurt?’
I shook my head, blinking the tears from my eyes when he wasn’t looking. I held the wire for him, and close up, as he ducked under my hand, I saw the faintest spattering of freckles on his nose, which was tanned like the rest of him, and that his eyelashes were longer than any girl’s. When he blinked, white-blond flashed at their tips.
‘How far is it?’ I asked, but he’d already started running uphill through the crop.
Long, thin strands of maize flowers waved in the breeze above our heads, and heavy green leaves whipped my face as I ran. We were completely hidden, and I wondered what he was going to show me: a nest maybe – something impressive like a kestrel or a buzzard – or a litter of feral kittens, but when we got there it was nothing like that. Really it was nothing at all. And that’s why it was bril
liant.
At the top of the hill, beside a lonely oak, Trick had beaten out a room in the corn. Narrow pathways led from either end, one to the brook and the paddock, where we’d come from, and the other – if you kept going for a mile or so – to Markeaton Park and the cemetery, and the ceramics shop over that way. The corn was so tall the pathways felt like corridors.
He threw himself down, and grinned up at me.
I grinned back, taking a patch for my own. The trampled stalks made a bumpy but comfortable bed. A few ripe corn on the cobs were piled in one corner. The rough grass scratched through my T-shirt and made my skin itch, but I didn’t care. I half closed my eyes so that sunlight caught and glittered between my lashes.
The sky was blue and infinite.
Somewhere above us a skylark trilled, and a sweet, dry scent rose from the crop. Everywhere you looked fat little spiders ran in and out of the deep cracks in the earth, rearranging themselves like kids in a game of Sardines. I asked Trick how old he was, and he told me to guess.
The sun had turned his thick hair blond at the ends, and he wore it long and to one side, so that every now and then he had to twitch it out of his eyes, which were strange because the pupil of his right eye bled black into his iris. It made him look odd and quizzical, like he was considering some private thing that he wasn’t sure whether or not to tell you.
‘Fourteen,’ I decided.
‘Fifteen in September,’ he said, as though it were a correction.
‘So fourteen, then,’ I repeated.
‘And you’re . . .’ He dragged the last word out, scrutinising me, and I worried that he would mention the bean juice, or that my ladies shorts were tied on, or that my hair was matted on the side from fidgeting in the night, but he just looked at my face, from eyes to nose to mouth, and up again.
‘Thirteen,’ he said, ‘no doubt about it,’ and he settled back, letting his palms make a pillow for his head.
I would be fourteen next month, but it would be babyish to point that out now. At least he hadn’t said twelve. Whenever anyone guessed Matty’s age they always said older. Once a boy at the rec guessed sixteen, but he probably just wanted to kiss her. I was too small and flat-chested to be in my teens. And for anybody to want to kiss me.
