by Mikey Walsh
I was grateful that my father didn’t ask me to drive the men to the pub any more. A few months earlier, not long after passing my test, I had crashed my father’s car head on with another car on a main road. I had taken Romaine and Frankie to buy cigarettes, it was raining and I came off a roundabout and lost control. None of us were hurt, but Frankie had to call my father to come down and bribe the driver of the other car, because I wasn’t insured. My father persuaded him to pretend it was my mother who crashed into him so that he could get his payout. After that I was beaten soundly and banned from driving.
I would lie low until they’d all gone, so that my parents thought I had gone out with the other teenagers. After they had all left, I would make my way quietly down to the retirement camp to meet Caleb.
After each night out, Caleb and I would end up walking the empty streets of the town, holding each other up and not wanting the night to end. And Caleb would pull me in close and tell me that he loved me. But I couldn’t help but think that this might be just how Gorgias are: more open about feelings, not afraid to show affection, and express themselves in ways that my lot never could. So I didn’t respond.
The next day Caleb would reassure me that he said it to all his friends when he was pissed, confirming what I had thought. I felt relieved that I hadn’t made a fool of myself by telling him I loved him too, even though I knew that I did.
My fourteenth birthday fell on a Saturday and I got a bus into town and spent the whole day celebrating it with Caleb in an Irish pub. I felt awful every time he raised his glass to me being twenty.
It was nearly 2 a.m. and we were walking home, when he said it again.
‘I love you, Mikey.’
I laughed. ‘I know, Caleb, you say it all the time.’
He became more serious. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I do,’ I answered, ‘but you’ve already said that you say that all the time to your friends.’
Caleb stopped, and faced me. ‘Mikey, I love you. I’ve loved you since I first saw you in the Dyna Bowl.’
‘I love you too,’ I said. I wrapped my arms around him and held onto him as tightly as I had always dreamed of doing. I could hardly believe that he felt the same way I did.
I couldn’t hold back the tears. He joked with me, calling me a big poof, and I laughed. I wished I could tell him just how much this meant to me, and how desperately I had been searching for him all these years.
It was after 3 a.m. when I got back to the retirement camp in a taxi. I walked towards our camp, dazed with happiness and disbelief. Then, from the direction of the toilets I heard a loud ‘Oi’.
Frankie and Kayla-Jane were calling from Wisdom’s van. I walked over to find Frankie sitting on Wisdom’s lap, and Kayla-Jayne on Tyrone’s. They were laughing hysterically. As the window wound down, a cloud of marijuana smoke wafted out.
Frankie looked haggard. It had been a good month since I had actually seen her out of bed and conscious. She was asleep when I got up for work each morning, and would leave soon after I got back.
Clearly I wasn’t the only one sneaking away at night. The girls had a ten o’clock curfew, but the boys would drop them back, then wait in the van in a nearby field. Once the men of the camp had returned from the pub, the girls would sneak out again to meet them. The discovery of such goings on could ruin their lives. The Gypsies on our camp disliked boys like Davey, Wisdom and Tyrone because they were rough, drug-taking types who gave Gypsies a bad name. Our father, and Kayla-Jayne’s, would have a fit if they knew the girls were seeing these boys, let alone sneaking off to meet them unaccompanied, and smoking drugs for half the night.
‘We know your secret,’ taunted Kayla-Jane.
I played dumb, my heart pounding. ‘What secret?’
Frankie crawled out of the van and walked me away a few paces. I could see the bags under her eyes. She pointed a finger right into my face. ‘Caleb,’ she said.
‘I’ve been going out with the Gorgias, that’s all.’
Her voice became very direct. ‘Do you know what me dad’s going to do when he finds out?’
I couldn’t swallow. I knew if that happened I would never see Caleb again.
‘He’ll move us away from here if he finds out you have Gorgia friends.’
Relief flooded over me. She didn’t know we were more than friends.
‘We’ll have to cover for each other then,’ I said calmly.
She shook my hand. ‘It’s a deal.’ We held each other and she kissed my cheek.
‘I love ya.’
‘I love you too.’
As Frankie skipped back to the van, I made my way back to our trailer.
For several months after that, everything seemed to be going well. Frankie and I rarely saw each other, but if our mother or father asked, we had been together all evening. Then someone told our mother what Frankie was really up to, and she told our father.
They waited for Frankie that night, and discovered that I too was not in the trailer. We were both caught, and in between the shouting and the arguments and the threats, Frankie tried to deflect the attention from herself to me.
‘Mikey’s hanging about with a gay Gorgia man.’
When my mother turned and asked if that were true, I denied it, though my cheeks burned scarlet. I confessed that I had been hanging out with some people from the Dyna Bowl, but insisted that Caleb was not gay. My mother accepted this, but my father beat me until he was spent.
‘If I ever hear anything like that around my ears again, I fucking swear I will kill you.’
Two days later we were moved as far away as my father could take us. And I was kept under tight watch until we left, so I didn’t even have a chance to let Caleb know.
I was being taken from the one person in my life that had made me feel truly alive.
As we left the lanes of Newark, my insides caved in. I lay on the floor in the back of the van and felt myself die. And yet I was still there. In that moment, that van and that life. My prison.
Two days later I managed to ring Caleb from a phone booth. We had been moved to a camp, miles away, in Chertsey.
He had been terribly worried that something had happened to me, and with no way to contact me, all he’d been able to do was wait in the retirement camp, night after night.
I burst into tears. ‘It’s no good,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know when I will ever be able to see you again.’
‘I’m not letting you go,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait. We’ll find a way, somehow.’
I promised to call him when I could, but I had no idea when that would be.
My father was determined to keep me from going anywhere. We went to work and once we came back, I wasn’t allowed to leave my trailer.
The camp was full of married couples and families with young children. There were no young people my age at all. It was as though the clock had turned back, and the last year, with its new freedoms and friends, hadn’t happened at all.
Frankie was distraught. She moped and sulked and spent most of her time in bed. But she too was using that phone booth. Wisdom tracked us down and within weeks she was once more sneaking out to meet him while the rest of the camp slept.
Frankie confided in our mother, who, realising that this was what her daughter wanted and that she wouldn’t be stopped, gave her support and covered for her.
I was glad for Frankie, but it made me feel even worse, trapped in the trailer and unable to see Caleb at all. I managed to ring him a couple of times and he wanted to come and see me, but I wouldn’t let him. I knew it was too dangerous – my father would have killed us both.
For the next couple of months, my father trailed around looking for work, finding very little. We were in a part of the country that had a big population of Gypsies, so the competition was fierce. And the lack of work put my father into a mood that darkened further each day. I turned fifteen, but this time there were no celebrations.
The only good thing about the Chertsey camp w
as that Frankie got in touch with our old friend Jamie-Leigh. Her family had come into a lot of money and her father had bought a huge house, just a few miles from the camp.
At nearly fifteen, Jamie-Leigh had chosen to become a born-again Christian, though it certainly didn’t put her off cigarettes or alcohol, or curb her famous foul language. She was still utterly gorgeous and still had a mouth like a sewer.
Jamie-Leigh was one of the few people I was allowed to see and it was wonderful to hang out with her again. I always felt that we were soul-mates and she, Frankie and I began spending a lot of time together, walking through the camp, talking about our lives, laughing over our schooldays and sharing our frustrations at out miserable, trapped lives as teenagers.
Our parents hoped they might be able to save us both by persuading us to marry and Jamie-Leigh dropped hints that I might ask her out. I loved her, as I always had, and if my life had been different, she would have been the only girl I could have married. But I was in love with Caleb, and even though I never wanted to hurt her, I ignored Jamie-Leigh’s hints.
Work was so scarce that my father had to sell all of his jewellery, and swap his vehicles for an old pick-up and a dodgy Cortina. He fretted and worried and, after three months, he decided, with a bit of persuasion from my mother, that we should return to Newark. He had always found work there, he felt the place was lucky, and my mother convinced him that Frankie and I had learned our lessons and there would be no more sneaking out to meet Gypsy boys for her, or mixing with Gorgias for me.
Though it meant saying another sad goodbye to Jamie-Leigh, I was overjoyed to be going back. I knew that it would still be very dangerous to meet Caleb, so I called him to tell him I was coming back, but would still be under trailer arrest, and I had no idea when I might manage to see him again.
Once we arrived it was hard to resist the longing to run over to the retirement camp next door, in the hope that he would be waiting there for me, but I didn’t dare.
I went to work each day with my father, and then spent the evenings sitting with my mother, Minnie and the boys. I would play with them until they went to bed, and then sit with my mother and talk.
Despite my frustrations and longing to be with Caleb, it was a special time.
My mother talked about her colourful childhood and shared stories with me as we went through her CDs and reminisced about the past. I loved the feeling of being close to her in a way that had rarely happened in the past. The two of us would sit up together until the men came home from the pub, when I would slip away to my trailer before my father came in. He still wasn’t speaking to me, and my mother and I both thought it best for me to avoid him. We knew it was only a matter of time before the rage building up inside him would erupt.
After another month of boiling silence, it finally did.
We were gritting a driveway when my father decided I had been too slow shovelling the grit. He walked over, grabbed the shovel out of my hand and swung it across my face, knocking me over. He swung the shovel at me again and again, until finally he threw it down and carried on with the job. As I wept, one of the dossas came over to help me up, but my father ordered him to leave me exactly where I was. The dossa picked up the shovel and carried on from where I left off
When we got back home, my mother was horrified at the sight of me. She screamed at my father, who kicked Henry-Joe and Jimmy out of the trailer, telling them to go and play, then dragged her inside.
I was left standing outside, covered in grit and blood. And in that moment, I knew that this was it. I had to go. I ran down the lane, through the camp and towards the retirement camp next door, desperately hoping I would see Caleb’s little orange pumpkin of a car.
As I turned the corner my heart leaped – it was there. He had come down after work to wait for me, as he had every day, in the hope that I would be able to sneak out. I opened the car door and got in, and we both burst into tears. The joy of finding one another again was muted by my fear, and Caleb’s horror at the sight of my battered face.
Wiping his tears on his sleeve, he took off, and didn’t stop driving until we had found a quiet side road in which to stop and talk.
I told him everything, including what Joseph had done to me, and my real age. And I told him I couldn’t go on being around my father, or hiding who I really was.
Caleb listened, and then told me he had guessed I was far younger than I pretended to be, though he was shocked to find I was only fifteen.
‘How did you know,’ I asked.
‘Because whenever we talked about the Gypsies getting married early, I wondered why you and your friends were not doing all of that yet. Besides, what twenty-year-old has curfews and still has to live by his father’s rules?’
It was a good point. And it made me realise that if I remained there, I would never, ever escape my father. Not when I was twenty; not even when I was forty. I would never be what he wanted, and I would never leave his shadow. I could waste my whole life trying to win his approval and never succeed.
I had to accept that he would never change.
I told Caleb how desperate I felt.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m going to take you away.’
He had a plan. He had been made manager of a Dyna Bowl up north, and he was leaving to begin his new job the following week. He asked me to wait two months, so that the Gypsies wouldn’t link his going with mine, and then follow him. He would be waiting for me, and we would begin a new life together.
I was happy, excited – and scared. Could we really do it? Could I face leaving my mother, Frankie, the boys and Minnie, knowing I might never see them again? It would break my heart.
But I had to go.
I had dreamed of escape so many times. But until now I’d had no idea how I would survive. Now I had someone who loved me, who would show me how to make a life for myself in the Gorgia world. Now the time was right.
When I got back to the camp an hour later, my absence hadn’t even been noticed. My mother filled a bowl of hot water and passed it to me. She had a black eye and several large bruises. We looked at one another and held back our tears. And as I turned to walk over to my trailer, she rubbed my back. ‘Clean that old bastard off you, my boy. I love you.’
It was only the second time I had ever heard her say it. I looked at her, and felt so much love. She had always done her best to fight for me. And now I was leaving her.
The day before Caleb left for his new job, I slipped out early and went to spend the day with him. I knew I would have to face my father’s wrath when I returned, but it was worth it to spend a few precious hours together.
Caleb drove me back well before my father was due home from work. But he had second-guessed us, and was waiting.
I jumped out of Caleb’s car and my father jumped into his and sped off after Caleb. I was terrified, but thankfully when my father returned an hour later, his black mood confirmed that he hadn’t caught him.
I was beaten again, but I didn’t care. Aching and bloody, I lay in my bunk and dreamed of my freedom.
For the next two months I carried on going to work with my father, and spent the evenings with my mother. I said nothing to her about Caleb or my feelings for him, but I knew that she knew there was someone. And she knew too that I was unhappy.
One evening Frankie slipped into the trailer, grinning. ‘Guess what I did today?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I got married.’
I gasped. ‘You married Wisdom?’
‘Yes. I love him, Mikey, he’s the one. I didn’t want to wait any longer. We went to the Register Office in town and did it.’
I was shocked, and somehow saddened. I had imagined a big wedding for Frankie, with all the family there. And I wanted her to find a good husband. She was only ever going to have one chance, and I felt very afraid that she had blown it by sneaking off and marrying a low-life like Wisdom. But I said none of this.
‘Congratulations, sis. I’m glad if you�
�re happy.’
‘I am,’ she grinned. ‘I’m going to find the right moment to tell Mum, and then she’ll help me with Dad. Don’t say a word to anyone yet.’
‘Course I won’t.’
A few days later I managed to slip out of camp to call Caleb. The two months were almost up, he was settled, and I didn’t want to wait any longer. We agreed he would come for me a week later.
The day before I left was bright and hot and I looked on as my father trained seven-year-old Jimmy to fight. D��jà vu set in as I watched Jimmy begin to cry following a punch from my father. Smack, smack, smack; he hit him three more times.
I jumped from the trailer. ‘Leave him alone,’ I yelled.
As my father turned to beat me out of the way, both my mother and my sister stood up to him too.
‘I swear to God, Frank, if you touch that boy again, I will kill you myself,’ my mother screamed, angrier than I had ever seen her before.
My father drew back a hand to hit her.
‘Go on then,’ she screamed. ‘I swear it, Frankie, I’ll call the Gavvers (police) right now and have you put away for life.’
As the argument raged and Frankie joined in, I grabbed Henry-Joe and Jimmy and led them away.
We walked through the fields behind the camp, and I told them I was leaving. I wanted to let them know, so that they wouldn’t wake and find me gone and think I hadn’t cared about them. I told them that they were not to ever take the shit from our father that I had. Henry-Joe, at nine, was so mature; he understood the whole obsession our family had for fighting almost as well as I did. But he knew that his fight would be to protect Jimmy. The two of them were understanding, beautiful and innocent. I reached down and grabbed hold of them both, hugging them as tightly as I could.
‘Your big brother loves you, don’t forget that,’ I whispered. ‘And tell Minnie for me too, when she’s old enough to understand.’
