by Mikey Walsh
It was, without doubt, the worst camp we had ever visited. We all imagined we would move on as fast as possible. But on the first day the men found there was plenty of work, so they decided we should stay for a while.
The trailer Frankie and I lived in was parked next to the far grander one occupied by our parents and the boys. Ours had been bought third- or fourth-hand and was intended to be run into the ground, and within a month of it being left in Frankie’s hands, it was well on its way.
The outer shell had a ‘once white’ scaly, lumpy surface, with a thick belt of oak brown that ran through the middle of it. The windows were blacked out, which was a godsend, given the disgusting orange and brown decor inside.
In the tiny kitchen area we had a non-working oven, used as storage, a non-working fridge stacked with nonperishable goodies and a microwave. Frankie’s bed was made up from two broken, brown bunks, surrounded by shelf upon shelf of fancy perfume bottles she had collected. Among the fancy scents were several used moisturiser tubs, filled with old fag ends.
The other end of the trailer, next to a shower cubicle also used as storage, was my room which consisted of two narrow cupboards, a pull-out bed, and a sliding door made of petrified paper with a wood pattern stained onto it.
Frankie was not a traditional Gypsy girl. She never cleaned, never cooked and despite the Gypsy belief that girls shouldn’t wash their hair while menstruating, she would never refrain from scrubbing the lacquer build-up out of her Chaka Khan do, whatever the time of the month.
She would remain asleep for most of the day, rolling over and growling ‘fuck off’ whenever our mother tapped on the window. But as Frankie was never willing to do any kind of housewifely chore at all, my mother was a teacher without a pupil. Around three o’clock Frankie would get up, and after an hour or so of trowelling on her make-up, she would be ready to face the world.
To get round the problem of cleaning, she would kidnap Henry-Joe and Jimmy nightly, dragging them over to our trailer so that she could ‘play’ with them. Once inside our trailer she would dress them in her clothes and make-up for the nightly ‘game’ of ‘Queen Ant’. Frankie was, of course, the queen ant in question, and the boys were her willing worker ants. They would drag the queen, crippled from over-eating and unable to move (which wasn’t far from the truth in Frankie’s case), from one end of the trailer to the other, cleaning and tidying as they went. Frankie would lay comatose as they passed by the fridge, picking up packets of biscuits and crisps to feed her. Once they had half-killed themselves getting her onto the bed, they would leave her stuffing her face in front of a video, while they finished cleaning the trailer.
Frankie, through sheer boredom, had doubled in size since we started travelling, and was not remotely interested in shedding weight. The more my father brought up her being fat, the more she would take sick pleasure in corrupting our brothers. Especially his champion, Jimmy, who was five years old, and already running a self-made training circuit and weightlifting daily with bean cans in pillowslips. Our father had no idea that during pub hours, little Jimmy was kitted out in miniskirts, high heels and fake Chanel clip-on earrings, spoon-feeding his ‘queen’ a microwave toad in the hole.
Henry-Joe, now age seven, was a mass of ginger hair, with a pinched, white face. He spent most of his time teaching Jimmy ridiculous words that made no sense whatsoever. He did it so often that the words became part of his own vocabulary, and all too often both boys were considered simpletons, running around in circles, screaming gobbledygook words at the top of their lungs.
I laughed long and hard at Frankie’s Queen Ant routine. My own games with the boys were more likely to be Sega ones – I spent hours with them, helping them work out the moves. I loved them dearly and enjoyed being around them, as long as my father was out of the way.
Eventually, to everyone’s relief, it was decided that we should move on, to a camp in Newark. It was, apparently, a great place to be, with plenty of work and a good camp. Aunt Rayleen, wife of my mother’s little brother Jimmy, told us her family had been there for weeks and had no plans to move.
‘It’s paradise,’ she told us excitedly. ‘Acres of land, hot and cold water, a nice shower block and plenty of electricity.’ We liked the sound of it – hot food, clean clothes, TV and, best of all, no need for a weekly trip to the local sports centre for a decent wash.
Rayleen’s three brothers were already there, and she talked about them constantly to Frankie.
‘Honest to God, Frankie, you’ve never seen three better-looking boys in all your life!’ she repeated over and over again like a rather manic parrot.
By the time we hit the road we all knew that the oldest, Danny, was a flame-haired, muscular twenty-five-year-old stud that was divorced (his wife’s fault, of course). Then there was Jay, who, according to Rayleen, looked like a young Marlon Brando, and every travelling girl in the country wanted a piece of him. And finally there was Alex, only sixteen, and already a renowned ladies’ man, due to his silver tongue and fancy pick-up lines.
I could see that Uncle Jimmy’s squeeze was intent on setting my sister up with one of her brothers. But what Frankie thought about it, I didn’t know. She was now fourteen, which was the courting age, and meant that she was officially ripe to start dating and find a husband.
All Gypsy girls are expected to marry between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, with a limit of no more than four boyfriends to sample beforehand. More and a girl is at risk of being called a slut. And boyfriends mustn’t be allowed to do more than show an interest. Gypsy men, while happy to pick up Gorgia women for sex away from the camp, want to marry a girl who has never even been kissed by another man.
The girls get the raw end of the stick. They spend their days training to become the perfect housewife, and in the meantime there is absolutely no sex before marriage, and they must not even speak of it.
The courting rules dictate that a girl also has to be officially asked out before even sharing a kiss with the boy she desires. On top of this, it is considered desperate and bad form to say yes to a date right away. The boy is expected to return with the same question at least a couple of times before getting the answer he longs for. Sadly, things often go wrong and the boys move on after a first rejection, leaving the girl heartbroken. And she can do nothing to resolve the situation. Having done the right thing and said no, for the sake of her reputation, she can only silently hope that he will come back and ask her one more time, at which point she will be allowed to say yes.
Many Gypsy girls go on to regret losing the one boy they really wanted, all because tradition dictates that they must say no when they long to say yes. And if they haven’t found a husband by the age of eighteen, they risk growing old alone, condemned to be unwed spinsters by a crazy set of customs.
Girls are also not supposed to talk to men when they have their periods. We boys, hearing about this via underground means (any talk of periods was another taboo), would watch the girls like hawks, waiting to see how far a ‘traditional’ girl would go in avoiding us, to keep to the custom.
Frankie ignored it, just as she ignored the no hair-washing-during-your-period rule. But she was still a Gypsy girl and, like her friends, wanted to find a husband. So it was with a little more effort over her clothes and hair than usual that she prepared for the move to Newark.
I was interested in meeting Rayleen’s brothers too, mainly because it was rumoured that they didn’t like Uncle Tory and his sons. When I heard that, my heart soared. Finally, a group of people who weren’t desperate to live in the Walsh shadow. I hoped to make friends with these boys, if only to annoy my father.
A couple of days before the move, a flurry of cleaning began. All the women, except Frankie, began scrubbing their caravans in order to make a good impression when we arrived. I was sitting in our caravan with Frankie, my mother, Aunt Rayleen and Aunt Minnie, who had come in for a coffee break, when my father arrived outside.
‘Stop sitting with the women and clean
the fucking van!’ he bellowed.
My mother rolled her eyes. ‘He’s at it again is he? There’s some cleaning stuff under the sink in the big trailer, Mikey.’
Five men were sitting in my parents’ trailer, talking about fighting, money and the move to Newark. Most of them I knew, but one was new. His front teeth looked as if they had been filed into jagged points.
‘He your oldest, Frank?’ he asked.
Uncle Matthew looked up from his can of cider. ‘He’s the oldest boy … looks like him don’t he?’
I kneeled down to the cupboard to find the cleaning stuff.
The snaggletooth man hissed with laughter. ‘Naah, he’s like his mother he is.’
I buried my head deeper into the cupboard to hide my blushing and smiled in quiet relief. I was happy to look like my mother, and grateful for someone who didn’t compare me to Uncle Joseph.
‘He hasn’t got his mother’s hair though,’ laughed Uncle Jaybus. He opened the window and leaned out. ‘She’s the Ginger Ninja she is!’
The men laughed. I stood and looked out toward Frankie’s trailer. Aunt Minnie leaned out, sticking up her two fingers. ‘Shut your mouth, swell head!’
Uncle Jaybus sniggered in his goofy way, then bellowed back to his wife. ‘I loves you, my ugly!’
Aunt Minnie cackled like a witch before collapsing in a coughing fit.
I ducked back down to the cupboard and picked up several dust rags, a can of polish and a dustpan and brush. I laughed, listening to the wails from the women in the other trailer.
My father walked over, pulling me up from the floor. ‘How long does it take to get a few cleaning things.’ He grabbed me by the shirt collar and kicked me out of the door, sending me hurtling from the top step and scattering the cleaning things.
The men laughed.
‘Gotta train ’em up, see?’
The laughter erupted again.
‘And don’t dare walk away from it till it’s spotless,’ my father called after me.
My father had swapped our car for an old blue transit van, which was better able to pull the second trailer. It was caked in a light grey and brown crust from a rabbit-hunting trip the night before. A couple of the local men had greyhounds and often went out rabbit hunting with them in the small hours, taking anyone who fancied tagging along with them. My father was not a fan of rabbit hunting, or of greyhound dogs, but it was a social sport and he went for the company.
I dusted myself off, picked up the cleaning things and went over to the van. I put a tape of fifties hits into the stereo, ‘Secret Love’ by Doris Day, blasted out at full volume, and right on chorus.
The men stuck their heads out of the trailer window, laughing. ‘Sing along then,’ shouted my father.
I smiled at my tormentors and turned it down. But I wasn’t going to turn it off.
I scoured the muddy footprints from the dashboard and pulled out the rubber mats from the floor, throwing them into a bucket of water, mixed with vinegar and washing-up liquid. Then I polished the dashboard, vacuumed the floor, cleaned the windows, emptied the glove box, swept out the back (where I sneaked a quick ciggie from the packet I’d found in the glove box), hosed the outside, dried it, polished it and, finally, put it all together again.
Five encores of Doris later, I was done. I stood, rags and bucket in hand, feeling proud. Not since the old bastard brought the thing home had it looked so sharp. No longer was it a filthy work van and pub taxi, but it was now a fabulous show vehicle. My refection shone off the side of the cab.
I emptied the bucket and rinsed it out at the tap.
Uncle Jaybus leaned out. ‘Good job.’
I beamed with pride. ‘Thank you.’
My hands were wrinkled, and white. I rolled my wet sleeves up and took the remainder of the cleaning stuff back into the trailer.
My father leaned over Uncle Jaybus’s shoulder. ‘Do it again.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve put that fucking car polish all over the cab. Wash it off, and do it again.’
‘You haven’t even looked properly.’
He leaped from the bunk and pushed me backward, out of the door and down the steps onto the ground. He threw out the bucket and rags after me and shouted, ‘Don’t answer me back, poofy boy. If I say do it again, you fucking do it.’
I climbed to my feet and picked up the bucket and the scattered rags and polish cans and stood, rooted to the spot.
Frankie appeared in the door of our trailer. ‘Let the fat cunt do it himself, Mikey. Come in here now.’
My mother and Aunt Minnie leaned from the window. ‘Just bring the stuff in here and come and sit down – it looks lovely, don’t it, Min?’
‘Yeah, Mikey, it looks lovely, come in here and have some tea.’
Heart pounding, I put down the bucket, walked up to my father’s trailer and opened the door.
The group of men, who had been guffawing with laughter, fell silent.
My father’s eyes darkened. ‘What do you want?’
My mouth was dry. ‘I want you to go and check the van.’
He rose from the bunk. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’
He seemed to swell in size, and all I could see was his luminous yellow glare. ‘You a big man now poofy boy?’
My body tensed. A swelling from the pit of my stomach rose and lodged in my neck.
‘Get out and clean that motor.’
My fists clenched so tight my nails dug into my palms.
Then he hit me. A punch, deep into my ribcage. I fell backward and clutched the steel frame of the doorway either side of me.
He laughed and stepped closer.
I thought of what he had done to me over the years and how I had suffered every hour of every day, trying to make him happy. I thought of the countless times he had relished humiliating me in front of his friends and family.
He kicked his foot out towards my stomach. But as he did, I launched myself forward, tightening my fist like a rock and bringing it down, heavy and hard on the bridge of his nose.
The cartilage squeaked beneath my bare knuckles, as he kicked me out through the door. The men in the trailer dived out of the way as he crashed into my mother’s Royal Dalton display. My mother, Frankie and Aunt Minnie screamed as I rolled onto the concrete for the third time that day. My father exploded from the trailer and charged at me like an enraged bull.
‘Leave him alone.’ My mother leaped from Frankie’s doorway and onto my father’s back, clawing, screaming and tearing at his face. But he grabbed her by the neck, punching her in the face before dropping her to the floor.
Frankie and Aunt Minnie, screaming and wailing, rushed over, picked her up and pulled her inside my parents’ trailer.
The group of men came quietly out of the big trailer and dispersed.
My father’s voice roared out. ‘I’m going to kill you!’
Laughing, crying and spitting out dirt, I climbed to my feet. ‘Come on, then!’
He swooped down on me and his fists crashed into my face, my ribs, my arms, my stomach.
Shaking with a rage I had never felt before, I screamed, spat, snarled and lashed out at him, numb to his punches, and laughing in his face. Then he lifted me over his shoulder and into Frankie’s trailer.
Kettles, perfume bottles, empty chicken buckets and ashtrays were sent crashing as he threw me across the bunk and began to punch me in the head, face and eyes.
‘I hate you!’ I screamed. ‘For as long as I’ve lived I’ve hated you!’
He shouted at me to shut up, slamming me with more punches as I screamed and laughed and spat clumps of bloody snot into his face. As his energy drained, so did mine. Our chests and stomachs heaved as we stared at one another, panting and sweating. As blood began to blur my vision, without the strength left to speak, I mouthed the words, ‘I hate you, Dad.’
He walked out of the trailer and I fell into blackness.
Our move was postponed because he disappeared. He didn�
�t come back to the camp again for four days.
During those days the rain fell steadily and my body ached constantly. My wounds were healing badly and I lay, curled in my bunk, waiting for my father to return.
I knew it was not my fighting back that had made him go, but the words I had screamed at him.
‘I hate you, Dad.’
Whatever hope there might have been for us, whatever tenuous bond we had hung onto, was gone. I hated him, and now he knew it. The huge love I’d felt for him as a small boy had been battered and taunted out of me, and we were both the losers. No doubt he was in some pub, hunched over a beer, bemoaning the fates that sent him me for a son.
As for me, I knew I needed to escape. It was my only hope. Otherwise he would kill me, or I would die anyway, of the pain and shame and hurt of being everything he didn’t want me to be, and nothing he did.
Eventually he returned, without a word to anyone about where he’d been. And in the days after that he only ever spoke to me to issue orders or threats.
Before we left for Newark Uncle Matthew and Aunt Nancy announced that they had decided to leave the convoy and head back south, taking Kenny with them. I was desolate.
Kenny and I hadn’t spoken since ‘that night’. Whenever he saw me coming towards his trailer he literally leaped out of it and ran away. But in my heart I had hoped that, in time, we could be friends again. I missed him so much – there had been no one else, ever, that I could laugh and talk and feel easy with in the way I did with him.
They left ahead of us, and everyone was upset. Losing some of our group after all those months together was hard. My mother and Aunt Minnie spent the morning hugging and crying with Aunt Nancy as the men helped Uncle Matthew and Kenny pack everything away.
With their trailers hooked on, the family sounded their car horns to signal goodbye. As the vehicles started to move, there were calls of goodbye and tears. Kenny’s car was at the back, and I waved my arms and shouted ‘Goodbye, Kenny,’ hoping he might wave or smile, to signal peace between us.
