Gypsy Boy

by Mikey Walsh

  At just eighteen Frankie was divorced and condemned to live with her parents, bringing up her son, alone. According to Gypsy custom, no man would ever look at her again.

  When we parted, my mother said she was going to go home and tell my father she was in touch with me again and that he had better accept it. And she said she would come again and bring Frankie, Henry-Joe, Jimmy and Minnie.

  To my amazement, she did. We met in a local airport – her idea because, although she was scared stiff of flying, she loved watching the planes.

  As I walked the long white tunnel into the terminal, I saw Henry-Joe standing at the window. He turned and looked at me before shouting my name and running toward me. He had been a child when I last saw him, but the boy charging down the tunnel with his arms flung wide was bigger than me. He jumped on top of me and we hugged and cried and laughed.

  Behind him came Jimmy, now twelve years old, a hulking lad, the living image of our father. Running after him was Minnie, seven years old, and the spitting image of our mother. Then there was Frankie, grinning at me and holding an adorable baby. My nephew. My mother was with them, and beside her – to my shock and amazement – was my father.

  For a moment the old fear returned, but he greeted me with respect, shaking my hand and patting my back, before graciously taking a step back to allow the rest of us to have time with each other and I realised that he had called a truce, if only for this day.

  After five years in the wilderness, I had my family back.

  We spent a couple of hours catching up, and after that day I was able to phone my mother regularly and she would pass me over to Frankie and the other three children to catch up. My father didn’t come on the phone, nor did he agree to allow another meeting. But at least I had contact.

  One afternoon, a few months later, Henry-Joe called me. He was worried. He had heard rumours about Uncle Joseph.

  Henry-Joe said he was worried that he might be overreacting, but he couldn’t help suspecting something awful. He asked if I could help. He passed the phone to our mother and I asked her if I could come and visit.

  ‘I’ll see what your dad says, Mikey, but I’m sure we can make him say yes.’ I packed a case and caught a train to West Sussex. My father had just bought an old farm there and was planning to turn it into a reputable Gypsy camp.

  When the train pulled in I was shocked to see Joseph waiting for me. The sight of him made me nauseous. In my years away I had managed to forget what he had put me though, and refused even to give him a thought.

  I played it cool, and greeted him. He decided to take us for a drive before heading to the house, and told me he had been worried about me. ‘Why did you go, Mikey?’

  I decided I’d tell him the truth, thinking it might get him to open up. ‘I’m gay, Uncle Joseph.’

  He looked at me for a moment; then sighed. ‘I am too … and I love you.’ His voice became desperate. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come home. I’m doing really well now. The yard is mine and I own my own funeral business. You could move in with me. No one will know and you’ll never have to work again.’

  ‘No, Uncle Joseph, I can’t do that.’

  He replied as if I had insulted him. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re my uncle. And I don’t feel the way you do.’

  ‘But you used to.’

  ‘No, Joseph, I never, ever did.’

  I boiled with shame and fury. I wanted to kill him. It was almost unbearable to pretend to be friendly. But I knew that I had to bide my time.

  My father’s farmhouse was no more than the shell of a building, standing in a muddy yard. My mother had big dreams for it, but in the meantime they were living in two trailers: Frankie and baby Frankie in one, and the boys, Minnie, my mother and father in the other. I smiled to see that the god-awful awning was still fluttering gently in the breeze in front of my parents’ trailer.

  The boys, Minnie and Frankie were excited to see me, but my father just turned away. My mother had phoned, begging me not to let him know the truth about me. She told me that she was happy that I was being true to myself, but that my father would never see it the same way. If he ever found out, she and the kids would be the first to suffer. I promised her to keep it a secret.

  That evening, as my father and Jimmy rolled around in fits of laughter in front of the movie Home Alone, I took my mother, Minnie and Henry-Joe over to Frankie’s trailer.

  As Frankie put the baby and Minnie to bed, I told them the whole truth about Joseph. As we spoke, Frankie’s eyes widened with anger and our mother’s face turned from white to fierce red. She asked that we all say nothing until she decided what she was going to do next.

  The next morning I went into town with Henry-Joe. When we got back, the family were sitting on the outside deck furniture my father had stolen from a local pub.

  My father leaped up, rushed over to me and punched me in the mouth.

  ‘Frank stop!’ screamed my mother as she, Henry-Joe and Jimmy prised him off me.

  My father shook himself and stepped back. ‘You poisonous little poof. How dare you come back here and spread stuff like that? Joseph is your uncle and thinks the world of you.’

  I took my phone from my pocket. ‘Let me phone him, and you’ll hear how much he thinks of all of us.’

  My father roared with fury and refused point blank.

  ‘You won’t do it, because you’re frightened it’s true,’ my mother yelled.

  My father shut his mouth and sank onto the bench, lighting a cigarette. My mother and Frankie calmed him and eventually he agreed to go into Frankie’s trailer with me, to hear for himself.

  Joseph answered after one ring. I turned the phone to speaker mode.

  ‘Hello, my babe,’ he said.

  My father’s face drained, but he remained silent.

  ‘Joseph?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  I was terrified but I looked at my family gathered round the phone and took a deep breath. I had to do this. So I told Joseph that I had heard the rumours and knew they were true, and I told him what the years of abuse had done to me.

  ‘But I love you, I’ve always loved you …’ Joseph bleated.

  I wondered if my father remembered the day I tried to tell him about Joseph, when I was a little boy.

  As Joseph went on talking, my father’s face visibly aged with shock.

  ‘Joseph, if you come near this family ever again, I will kill you.’

  ‘Mikey, please, don’t talk to me like that.’ Joseph began to sob. ‘I love you, I’ve waited for you. Mikey, please! Say something …’

  My father began to weep. I put down the phone then leaned over and placed my hand on my father’s knee. I saw me in him for the first time in my life. But after a few seconds he pulled away, lifting his face from his palms to stare at me.

  ‘Get out.’

  A month later my mother called to say that my grandfather, Old Noah, was on his deathbed. And he wanted to see me.

  My mother told me he had asked to see her alone. He asked her to empty out his pockets. She found a wad of fifty-pound notes, a pair of owl-eye glasses and a wallet with Granny Ivy’s picture inside.

  ‘Bettie, you have always done the right thing,’ he told her. ‘And I know that you and my Prissy have been best friends since you were babies.’ He stretched out a shaky hand, heavy with gold rings. ‘Take those things from my jacket and these rings and give them to Prissy. Otherwise as soon as I’m gone they’ll pull them from my fingers and my little girl will end up with nothing.’

  My mother did as he said, wiping his tears as she helped him remove the jewels from each finger.

  ‘He says he’s going to wait for you,’ she said. ‘Can I send someone to pick you up from London? He hasn’t got much time left.’

  I had no idea why my grandfather had asked for me. But I wanted to say goodbye. My mother sent her brother Alfie to collect me and we raced through the outskirts of London and onto the motorway. An hour later, as I
ran through the hospital corridors towards his bedside, my grandfather died.

  I sat beside him. His face was bruised from a fall and his weight had plummeted so low that he was barely recognisable. His left arm was in a bandaged sling that hung in the air. After such a heroic life and a major heart operation, it was a mere splinter, trapped under his fingernail that had finally done for him, causing an infection that spread through his body.

  The king was dead. I would never look into those steely blue eyes again. And I would never know what he had wanted to say to me, but I often imagined, in the years after he died, that he had wanted to say he was proud of me.

  I held his heavy hand in mine and sang my childhood party piece, ‘Ol’ Scotch Hat’. He’d always loved it.

  His funeral, a few days later, was a huge affair. He had requested that his grandsons carry his coffin, but my father and Tory refused to allow me to take part.

  ‘If he can’t carry that coffin, then he will push me along right behind it,’ Aunt Prissy said. And I did. There were more than a few hisses in my direction as I pushed her wheelchair through the crowd, and I kept my head down. But Aunt Prissy leaned back and looked me in the eyes. ‘You’ve done better than any of these misfits, my boy. Not a one of them could ever do what you have done. You should be proud.’

  Belle calls. She is stuck in traffic. I go out onto the balcony. The sun is warm and I turn my face to it. I look down at my shoes and tap them together. The sunlight blisters across the sequins, sending patterns of red against the wall.

  I wish I could go back, just for a day, to play with Frankie, Jamie-Leigh, Olive and Twizzel, to thank Mrs Kerr for making me feel I wasn’t useless, to see my little grandmother combing Aunt Prissy’s beautiful hair. To try again with my father.

  But I can’t go back, and I’m proud of where I am today.

  I moved to London with Leigh, both of us convinced that it would surely bring us both the fame and fortune we so rightly deserved.

  Over White Russians, we clinked our glasses to the idea that London would be the place to grow up, rehabilitate and finally use our experiences to get creative. He took up a course in creative writing, and I had my hard-won place at drama school.

  I loved every crazy creative minute of it. Three years of soaking up knowledge, friendship, and a sanctuary where I could release all my inner angst. I learned the joy of expressing myself through creative writing and finally got, and loved, Shakespeare. In that school I found people I knew I would be close to for the rest of my life.

  After it was all over, the idea of walking on stage was no longer important. I tried the acting thing, but I only lasted a few months. I hated the idea of auditioning: the strangers, the casting calls, the constant need to please and be liked … and then the pain of rejection. It was a relief to walk away.

  In between the crappy acting jobs I had worked in a bar. It became a great refuge, and a place I will always hold close to my heart. It was there that I made my closest friends, and met the man I’m marrying today.

  I decided I wanted to work with children, getting a job as a teaching assistant, helping children with special needs. I smile sometimes to think how much most Gypsies hate schools, and here I am, spending my working life in one, and feeling so at home.

  I learn all the time; about history, how our bodies work, where places are in the world. All the things I missed, first time around.

  But Leigh is dead.

  ‘I want a good life Mikey, not a long one,’ he would always say.

  The last time we met, we spent several hours reminiscing about the fun we’d had. Unsurprisingly for him, with his flair for melodrama, he brought up the subject of his death.

  ‘We’ll have an ending like that bit in Beaches. You can give me a big cuddle and tell me how jealous you’ve always been of me,’ he laughed. ‘And you can give me a big speech that makes everybody cry before they lift me out of the coffin and have me explode with glitter all over the audience.’

  He wanted this moment to come at the crescendo of Nessun Dorma.

  When he left the bar, we didn’t have a big emotional goodbye. No big hug, kiss, or I love you. Just ‘see you later’.

  The next time I saw him it was our Beaches moment.

  He had gone to a club and met a guy who had spiked his drink with a massive amount of liquid Ecstasy. Hours later he was in a coma and when I reached his bedside in hospital he could not speak or move. But he could cry, and he managed to squeeze my hand.

  I hugged him just as he said I would. And told him how jealous of him I was, just as he said I would. And at his funeral I gave an eulogy to end all eulogies. Just as he said I would.

  Then I came home and broke my heart.

  My best friend was gone. All of our memories were now mine alone.

  I still find myself trapped within rooms in my subconscious that I cannot understand. And I still have the odd nightmare and sleepless night and daily dose of self-doubt.

  But who doesn’t?

  I don’t as often as I did before. And when I sat down to write my story, it was as a tribute to Leigh, because without him I could never have done it.

  A few months ago I attended Henry-Joe’s wedding. Layla had been with us at Newark. He had grown up with her and now, over ten years later, they were to be husband and wife.

  I had to be there to see the happiest day of his life. My father was there, so I stood discreetly amongst the crowd, but that was good enough for me. I watched Henry-Joe spinning around the dance floor with his beautiful new wife and my mother’s proud smiles and felt truly happy.

  The day after Dillan said yes, I called Henry-Joe to ask him to be my best man. Only first, I had to come out to him. I asked how well he knew me, and he replied, pretty well.

  I said I had something to tell him, and he said that he thought he already knew. I told him I was gay and he said, ‘I love you even more for it.’

  The next question was ‘Will you be my best man?’

  After several moments of shouting with surprise, he wept with joy. ‘More than anything, Mikey, I would love to be your best man.’

  Henry-Joe would be there for me, but my mother would not. If my father knew I was marrying, he would forbid my mother to come, and she could not bring herself to betray him. But she wanted to do something for us as a gesture of her love, so she made our wedding cake. Despite having been the world’s worst cook throughout my childhood, she had since mastered the art of making a perfect fruitcake. And her passion for creative decor had evolved into an ability to make practically anything imaginable out of a roll of icing and a couple of well-placed toothpicks. So talented was she, that she had started her own cake-making business.

  She made mine over a weekend when my father was away and I went to stay with her. We were up till all hours, designing, preparing, baking and sugar crafting. We moulded and nattered from dawn to dusk, and then from dusk till morning, taking only short coffee breaks in which I would draw up a picture of the ‘bling’ wedding ring I had made for Dillan and make her laugh with stories of him parading around in it.

  The cake was a work of art which even my mother, whose cake-making skills had become renowned, was amazed to have accomplished. Three tiers high, and like a ghostly ball gown, with folds of shimmering white-chocolate icing. She crafted bouquets of edible flowers that burst from each ruffle. And at the very top, a solid white chocolate skull, covered in exotic flowers and strings of edible pearls. The people in the bar where we were holding our reception were in total awe of such a cake, when Henry-Joe and I dropped it off.

  Before I left that weekend, my mother pulled me to one side and passed me a small green box. Inside she had put her own wedding ring.

  ‘It’s for you, Mikey. I want you to have it.’

  It will be the one I wear on my finger today. I check the box to see it’s still there.

  The phone goes.

  ‘Whooooo! I’m here!’

  ‘Oh my God, Frankie?’

  ‘Yes. I�
�m coming with Henry-Joe. And I’m wearing the biggest and brightest yellow dress you’ve ever seen!’

  Just a month ago, full of half-cut confidence, I came out to her over the phone.

  Her reaction was very different to the one I had from Henry-Joe. She said that she was angry that I could have kept such a secret from her all these years, and that she was happy for me, but could not take part in my life.

  I hadn’t expected to hear from her today, let alone see her.

  She whoops into the phone, like a crazy ladette.

  ‘Mikey, I’ve dyed my hair like Pamela Anderson! I’m a big fuckin’ mermaid.’

  I laugh out loud at the vision.

  ‘You’ll be the belle of the ball!’

  ‘I know that … don’t think I haven’t planned to find myself a rich husband there.’

  After a few minutes of giving directions to the town hall, we hang up and I dance around the floor in bliss. How wonderful to have my brother as my best man, and Frankie there too.

  Belle texts me that she has arrived and I go down to meet her. As I walk out of the door I see her standing on the open roof of her little 1950s convertible. She’s wearing a vintage gold Moschino dress that makes her look just like Audrey Hepburn, only with massive knockers.

  When I am three feet away, she honks on the horn and waves as if I was the other end of the park. Brightly coloured balloons float up from her car and into the clear blue sky, like a school of tropical fish.

  We sit in the car and Belle slaps her miracle concealer across my nose. She turns the rear-view mirror towards me, so that I can check out her handiwork.

  ‘Amazing,’ I grin.

  She snaps her compact shut and winks. ‘Told you.’

  We set off down the road, launching several more balloons as we roar along. With the wheel in one hand, and her satnav in the other, Belle leans over and grabs a cigarette from my carton with her teeth.

  As I light her up and grab my own, Henry-Joe calls again. They are in the bar across from the town hall. I tell them I will only be a few minutes.