by Stef Penney
I waited for her to tread on it.
After walking her around the corner to her car, I said good-bye. I didn’t ask if I would see her again. She said good-bye without looking at me. She didn’t walk away. Could have—should have, perhaps—but she didn’t walk away.
When I pull off the side road a couple hours later, the site is basking in some rare sunshine. It seems deserted, the trailers quiet and shut up. I knock on the door of Ivo’s trailer. No reply. It’s locked. Total silence. All the cars are absent. Then I knock on Tene’s door and wonder what I should do next, when there is a ragged shout from within.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Ray. Ray Lovell.”
“Come in! Come in. ’S open.”
At first glance the trailer is empty. Then I see something moving—it’s Tene’s hand—raised in a wave from the floor beside his chair.
“I’m all right. All right. I’ve just fallen. Got stuck.”
“Don’t move. What happened?”
I kneel beside him.
“Was trying to get into my chair and—”
“Don’t try and stand up. It’s okay . . .”
He’s tugging at the waistband of his trousers. I can’t help seeing that the fly is undone. He was probably using the toilet when he fell but, too embarrassed to be found like that, somehow dragged himself into the living room before his strength gave out. I search my memory for fragments of the first-aid training that Eddie Arthur insisted I do as a junior investigator.
“Did you hit your head? Mr. Janko?”
“No. Just get me up again. Get me up. Be all right.”
I examine his face for signs of a stroke, but as far as I can tell, he looks normal.
“Maybe I should call an ambulance . . .”
“No, no, no. I fell. Just get me up!”
“What day is it?”
“Bloody hell!”
I thread my arms under his shoulders, lock my hands together, and heave him upright, terrified I’m going to make something worse. Although not much could be worse than paraplegia, I tell myself. Despite the weight of him, I’m shocked by how sharp his bones feel, how small in their sack of flesh. I’m scared that if I squeeze too hard, something will snap. Then there is an embarrassing pantomime whereby, once I’ve got him upright, I have to pull him up into midair so that he can haul up his trousers and fasten them, but then, at last, he is restored to something like dignity, slumped in his wheelchair. His face is an unhealthy color, far paler than usual.
“How long were you on the floor?”
My voice sounds sharp, the way it used to with my dad when he wasn’t looking after himself.
“Not long.”
“How long, Mr. Janko?”
“They all went off. . . went out, and there was no one around . . .”
“When was this?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Not long.”
“Okay. Well, let me make you some tea.”
“Now you’re talking. Cup of tea. I wouldn’t say no.”
In the tiny kitchen at the far end, I put the kettle on, and open and shut doors, looking for mugs and plates. I find packets of biscuits and a whole cupboard stuffed with bags of crisps. There are tea bags and cartons of UHT milk. There is chocolate: an economy-size bag of Marathons and Mars bars. My dad was the same—addicted to salt, grease, and anything convenient and unhealthy.
When I bring over biscuits and mugs of tea, Tene looks a little better. He adds spoonfuls of sugar to the tea—I lose count—and blows on it.
“Not that easy, living in a trailer.”
“Oh. Best way to live.”
“But living in a house would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it? A bungalow. You’d have a lot more space . . . and no steps. Be easier to get in and out.”
Tene looks up at me from under lowered eyebrows.
“Ray, kid, look at me. I’m sixty years old. I’ve lived on the road all my life. I was born in a horse-drawn vardo. Our mare when I was little, Bryn, she was my best pal. We didn’t get a motor trailer till I was thirty. Of course, we had to move on. That was what you did in them days, or you got laughed at. We kept Bryn with us till she died. She was a true friend.”
I do sums in my head. Of course, there were still horse-drawn wagons on the roads in the forties and fifties—even later. Painted wagons were the norm. Bender tents. My dad saw that, when he was young.
“Can you imagine Tene Janko in a house? Little brick box in a row of brick boxes? It would be putting me in my coffin. It would be my death. They tried to make me give it up when I first had my accident; they kept saying, you can’t live in a trailer no more—it’s not possible. You can’t do it! Well, I’ve proved them wrong, haven’t I?”
I nod. “Yes, you have.”
“You can’t change what people are. This is what I was born, and this is what I’ll be when I die. Gorjios don’t understand that. I told them: you’d be killing me the same as sticking a knife in my heart. I might as well have died in the crash. It’s in my blood. All of us. Even Christo. It’s in our blood!”
His voice is fierce.
“ ‘Assimilation,’ they call it. Annihilation, more like.”
He chews savagely on a digestive. His eyes are feverishly bright. At least anger has brought some color back to his face.
“How did it happen then—it was a car crash, I think you said?” His head goes down; he takes a long slurp of tea. “Was that after Rose left?” Silence. The silence of a storm cloud. “Or before? You said it was about six years ago, so I just wondered . . .”
“Wondered what?”
“Well . . . just, it must have been such a difficult time, what with Christo and all that.”
He makes a noise that I can’t interpret, followed by silence. I drink some more tea, chew on a stale biscuit, and wonder if he knows I am checking on him.
“She was long gone by then.”
That was the phrase that Lulu had used: long gone. But it couldn’t have been that long, with Christo still so young.
“I can’t remember the crash. Just afterward. When they were telling me what I could and couldn’t do. And I was in terrible pain. Terrible.”
He looks at me accusingly.
“Of course. It must have been. But you’ve showed them, haven’t you? That you can live the way you want.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
“You’re lucky you had your family around you.”
“That’s what families are for, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Still . . . some families are closer than others.”
“You’re thinking of my sister Luella, I can see that. Well, despite everything she might say, she’s still a Janko.”
Outside, a car engine gets louder as it swings into the paddock and then cuts out.
Tene cranes his neck to see out the window.
“Look now. There’s Ivo. And she’s let him stay with her, of course, while the boy’s in the hospital.”
I nearly spit my tea out.
“He’s been staying with Lulu?”
“Yeah. Course. She lives the nearest out of anyone. These are the times when you’ve got to be with family, no matter what.”
I take another bite of digestive, to give myself time to think. Why didn’t she say anything about Ivo staying with her? Shit. Shit! I’d never have said anything about the discovery at the Black Patch if I’d known . . . Fuck. No reason why she would have told him, though. She might not have seen him since . . .
There are footsteps outside, and Ivo knocks briefly on Tene’s door, opening it without waiting for an answer. He stands half silhouetted in the doorway, shopping bags in one hand.
“Mr. Lovell . . . Dad . . . All right? I’ve brought you that stuff.”
“Thank you, my kid. Just put it in the kitchen there.”
Ivo brushes past me on the way to the kitchen and empties the plastic bags onto the counter. More bags of crisps, from the look of it. Instant meals in pots.
“Why don’t you stay and
have a tea with us?”
“In a bit, maybe.”
I stand up.
“I don’t want to keep you. I really should be . . .” I look at Tene. “You’re sure you’re all right now, Mr. Janko?” I turn to Ivo. “Your father had a bit of an accident—he fell getting into his chair. There was no one else here. Lucky I came by, with everyone away . . .”
“You what? You fell? How did you manage that?”
He sounds irritated.
“It’s nothing, kid. You know, happens sometimes. I’m fine.” Tene flaps his hand dismissively. “Mr. Lovell is making a mountain out of a mole-hill. He’s been very kind, though. Very kind. Glad you stopped by, Mr. Lovell. Yes, indeed.”
Ivo looks at me, his eyes steadier now, as if he’s really seeing me for the first time. He steps aside to let me pass through the doorway but then speaks before I get there.
“Mr. Lovell, don’t go yet. Stay and have a bite to eat with me. I wanted to say thank you for everything you’ve done for Christo . . . And sorry for . . . you know. Please?”
He smiles, if you can call it that. I think you can call it that.
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble; there’s really no need . . .”
“No trouble. Please—stay.”
There’s a look on his face I’ve never seen before. Almost . . . warm. I look from him to Tene.
Maybe this is the perfect opportunity. Maybe the barriers are finally coming down. Maybe this is the time to tell them my news.
“Tell you what,” I say, “why don’t I nip to the nearest off ie and get some beers. What do you say?”
39.
JJ
This morning they took the tube out of my arm, so I’m free to get out of bed. My arm still hurts, but some of the heat has gone out of it. And I feel almost normal. When Emma, the nice young nurse, changed the dressing, she congratulated me on making such a fast recovery.
Then Gran came and brought loads of food, convinced I must be starving. She stuffed packets of crisps and bought sausage rolls into the cupboard by my bed “for later.” I’m not really that hungry at the moment, but I didn’t tell her. She also brought me a set of pajamas, striped, a dressing gown, and a pair of leather slippers—proper men’s ones. They’re too big (of course, so I can grow into them), but still, they’re not too bad. The dressing gown’s a sort of velvety tartan long thing with a belt like a rope with tassels on the ends. It’s far too hot for this weather, but I like it; it makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes. I thought she’d just be angry with me, so I was touched.
I’m walking down one of the corridors on the upstairs floor, shuffling along in my too-big slippers, poking my nose into places, when I find him. I wouldn’t say it’s the very last thing I expected, but it’s got to be pretty far down the list: the private detective, Mr. Lovell, is in this hospital, too! I peer into one of the little rooms where there are only one or two beds, and there he is, with my friend Emma bending over him. I stop and stare harder, just to be sure.
“Mr. Lovell!” I practically shout in my surprise. It’s like seeing an old friend—I’m delighted. He’s lying in bed but turns his head and stares. His face looks strange, sort of blank and slack. I’m not sure he remembers me.
“It’s me, JJ!”
“Hello, JJ,” says Emma. “Do you two know each other?”
I nod, suddenly unsure what to say about just how we know each other. Emma puts down whatever she’s fiddling with and comes toward me, talking over her shoulder to him.
“I’m just going to have a word with JJ. Back in a sec.”
Outside in the corridor, she puts a hand on my shoulder.
“JJ, I’m afraid your friend Mr. Lovell is really quite poorly. He gets rather . . . confused. He might not recognize you.”
“Oh! What’s wrong with him?”
She pauses, and for a moment I think she isn’t going to tell me.
“He’s had a rare form of food poisoning.”
I try to stare past her at the figure in the bed. She smiles, but she’s blocking the door with her body.
“Oh! But he is getting better?”
“Oh, yes. We’re sure he’ll make a full recovery. But at the moment he’s still quite poorly, so . . . maybe you should come back tomorrow. Okay?”
“He’s going to be all right, though?”
“He’ll be fine. It just takes a while to work itself out.”
“Oh. I see.”
Actually, I don’t see at all, but sometimes you have to pretend you do understand just to make people feel comfortable. Just as (much more often, in my experience) you sometimes have to pretend that you don’t understand what someone has said or what’s going on, otherwise things can get awkward.
“What type of food poisoning causes that?”
I’ve heard of getting ill after eating a dodgy kebab—it makes you throw up and gives you the runs. But I’ve never heard of anyone eating something that makes them confused. What does that mean, exactly, anyway? Why would he not recognize me?
“It’s very rare. Don’t worry. It’s not catching.”
I shuffle off down the corridor feeling weird, but not in a way that’s anything to do with having blood poisoning in my arm. More like someone’s walked over my grave.
Mum comes a few hours later and brings Great-uncle with her. No one refers to the argument we’d had. I wonder if Mum has mentioned it to anyone. I think she probably hasn’t. One thing I do discover, though, and this is really good news: Ivo has gone up to stay in London to be near Christo, and no one knows when he’s coming back, so that’s a relief.
“You’ll never guess who I saw in here,” I say to Great-uncle. “Remember that private detective, Mr. Lovell? He’s in here!”
Great-uncle doesn’t look at me for a moment. I think he hasn’t heard.
“Mr. Lovell . . . You know? He’s here!”
Mum says, “Oh, dear. What’s he doing here?”
“He’s got some weird form of food poisoning. He’s quite ill, actually. They said it makes you confused. What sort of food poisoning does that?”
Great-uncle looks at his hands and sighs.
“I don’t know, kid. I really don’t know.”
“I can talk to him tomorrow, they said.”
Mum says, “Goodness, the poor man.”
Great-uncle says, “Yup. There’s a lot of it about. Jimmy’s brother Bill was taken poorly the other week. Horrible, it was, he said.”
Mum says, “I brought you some grapes, love. And some biscuits. Look . . . your favorites.”
“Thanks, Mum . . .”
I offer them the bag of grapes.
“No, you keep them for yourself. Don’t want you to fade away, do we?” Grapes are a special treat. She must have bought them downstairs, from the hospital shop, where everything’s really expensive. As far as I can remember, she has never bought grapes before; I’ve eaten them only once or twice, at school. In Katie’s house there was a huge bunch of them, purple and foggy, spilling over a glass plate on the breakfast bar—or was it the tea table? They looked so perfect I didn’t dare touch them. I thought maybe they weren’t real.
Mum says, “Didn’t he come back the other day? The day I came to see JJ. What was that for?”
Great-uncle shrugs. “I dunno. Something about Christo, I suppose. He wasn’t there long.”
“Making friends, apparently, him and Ivo! That’s nice, isn’t it?”
Mum winks at me. Great-uncle clears his throat.
“You mean Mr. Lovell went to see you again, at the site?” I ask.
Great-uncle looks at me sharply, then looks away again.
“Yeah. That’s his job, isn’t it?”
He seems uneasy, though. I have that sensation again, the one I felt outside Mr. Lovell’s room, the prickly cold thing that walks up your spine.
“Sweetheart? Are you all right? You’ve gone all peaky.”
The thing is, there’s another word for chovihano.
Mum leans
over and strokes my hair back from my forehead. “It’s getting so long, you look a right hippie . . . Are you tired? Do you want to go to sleep?”
“Mm. Yeah.”
She kisses me on the forehead and makes some cooing noises. I’m afraid I might cry, so I shut my eyes. I wish I could just enjoy it. I wish I was her baby again, just a kid who’s too young to see things and too young to worry about anything, but I’m not, and never will be again.
I know too much, and I’m pretty sure it’s only going to get worse. The other name for a chovihano is drabengro, which means “man of poison.”
40.
Ray
I went to get beers and ended up having to drive around to find a pub that did takeouts, so it was more than half an hour before I got back to the site to find Ivo cooking with a cigarette in one hand. I suppose after Rose left, he had to get used to fending for himself. But it still strikes me as odd—a Gypsy man in the kitchen is a rare sight. There are packets of crisps on the table, and he indicates that I get started on them.
“I’ll go back up and see Christo tomorrow,” he says.
“Oh, good . . . You’re staying with your aunt?”
“Yeah. Handy that.”
“Yeah. Do you see a lot of her?”
“No. Haven’t seen Auntie Lulu for years.”
She couldn’t have said anything, I decide.
“He’s a lovely boy, Christo,” I say.
Ivo smiles at the pan. “Yeah, he’s the best.”
He stops smiling.
“You must miss him.”
“Yeah.”
Ivo scrapes something from a bowl into the pan. I can’t see what it is. Then he throws in lots of salt. He stirs the pan’s contents—some sort of stew. He leans his hip on the counter, keeping an eye on the pan, chain-smoking. The stew doesn’t seem to need much attention, but he doesn’t leave it. He needs something to do, and this way, he doesn’t have to look at me . . . or be looked at. He doesn’t have to talk.
“You never thought of giving him up to another family? Your cousin, say?”
Ivo gives me a brief shocked look, then shakes his head. I ask because Gypsy men don’t often bring up small children on their own; it’s not uncommon for a widower to pass his children to a female relative to look after.
