by Mikey Walsh
A text arrives from my mother.
‘Good luck, my son. I love you with all my heart.’
We stop briefly at the bar where the reception will be, so that I can take the foil off the cake. My lovely, and always reliable mate Rufus is there, the perfect master of ceremonies organising everything. The bar looks incredible; all wooden panels, fairy lights, exotic flowers and pastel-coloured birds.
Back in the car Belle looks at me.
‘This is it.’
As we drive, I plug my iPod into the stereo. The wind sweeps through Belle’s hair as we sail toward the town hall and I think of Caleb. I will always love him. I wonder about where he is now, what he is doing and whether he would be happy for me. I hope he is happy.
With five minutes to go before the ceremony, Belle pulls over in front of the pub opposite the town hall. She leans over and kisses me.
‘See you inside, my darling.’
She flies off in a mass of balloons, as a crowd of brightly coloured gowns, frock coats, top hats and layers of sparkles spill out of the pub, all cheering.
There are my friends from Liverpool, from the Guildhall, and the wonderful little bar where I first met Dillan; a decade of new and old friends. And beside them, smiling proudly, stand my brother, his wife Layla, and my sister.
Like an elegant circus they all parade across to the town hall, hugging me, shaking my hand, and blowing kisses, wishing me luck as they pass.
Last of all comes Dillan, in his white Vivienne Westwood suit and silver trainers.
We stand and grin at one another.
Frankie spins round, her dress cracking like a dragon’s tail in the middle of the road.
‘Hurry up, then!’ she laughs.
We race to catch up with our merry band, crossing the road and winding its way up the marble steps toward the great oak doors.
Epilogue
Two years after my father learned the truth about Joseph, he turned up at Joseph’s door with Jimmy and let him know that he knew the truth. Joseph lashed out at my father, but Jimmy, by then in his mid teens and as large as a truck, punched him in the mouth, exploding four of his front teeth.
Four more boys came forward to say that Joseph had also abused them. Unwilling to pass him over to the police, the accusing boys’ fathers, their friends and relatives made his last years a living hell. He was hunted, tortured, and beaten up by men who once looked up to our family. He went to work for a scrap company in another town, and five years ago he died, alone in his home, from a heart attack.
My father no longer has anything to do with his remaining brother, Tory. After Old Noah died, Tory refused to speak to them again, and in the following years, he lost most of his money.
My father has throat cancer – a legacy of his years of heavy smoking. He is near blind, and spends most of his time asleep in front of the TV. His last attempt at bullying the family ended when Henry-Joe stood up to him and hit him back, yelling ‘You might be able to scare everyone else, old man, but I am not a little boy any more. I’m a better man than you will ever be, so don’t ever raise your hand to me again.’
My father did not. He knew that he had been beaten.
Jimmy, now barely twenty, turned out to be the wolf my father had hoped for. But my father’s violent training backfired. No one, not even my father, can stop Jimmy’s violence now. My father came to believe he was possessed, and took him to a church in the hope of an exorcism. It made no difference: Jimmy still spends his life looking for trouble. He has been charged several times with grievous bodily harm – on one occasion, towards thirteen people at one time. It began as a spat in the local pub when a Gorgia man tried to chat up Frankie. She tried to get rid of him before Jimmy arrived back from the bar. She pushed him away and he punched her in the eye in front of Jimmy, sealing his doom. The night ended with several people with broken bones and the guy who started it all with his index finger bitten off by Jimmy and spat across the carpet.
The days of knocking on doors are history – it is now against the law to call, the way Gypsies used to. The younger generation, while determined to carry on with their traditions for as long as possible, are having to find new ways of surviving.
I hope that they can. Left to themselves the Romanies live peacefully and quietly, away from the spotlight. But the Irish Travellers have damaged the image of travelling people everywhere – parking trailers wherever they choose, and scattering litter. There is also a lot more violence, not just with fists, but with knives.
A couple of years ago my brothers were accosted by a gang of fifteen Irish Travellers, aware of the reputation of our family as fighters. Henry-Joe and Jimmy were prepared to fight, but knives appeared, and today Henry-Joe has vicious scars across his back, and Jimmy, after surgery for wounds to his face, was left with paralysed muscles down one side.
As for our old friends, many of them have encountered hard times.
Kayla-Jayne’s boyfriend Tyrone left her after she slept with him. Weeks later she realised she was pregnant. She kept it hidden until the eighth month, when her family found out. Tyrone was forced to marry her, but of course it didn’t last, and, like Frankie, she and her child live with her parents.
Levoy turned to crack not long after my departure, and was sent to stay with a family in San Diego to dry out. I saw him a few years ago, and although he was free of drugs, they had affected him deeply, both physically and mentally. He now lives with his parents and works in a local store in Newark. Bitter about what our upbringing has made him, he doesn’t see any of the people he used to know.
Adam came back to the Newark camp, and is now married, with three children.
Romaine didn’t marry. Now in her mid-twenties, she is regarded as a spinster. Aunt Minnie still wears her fur coat.
Jamie-Leigh married a violent man, who, while high on Ecstasy, was hit by a train and killed. In the years after I left Newark, when both she and Frankie had lost their husbands and were excluded socially, they found one another again and became very close. Jamie-Leigh would come round every day, always joking with my brothers that she was waiting for me to return and marry her. When my family came to meet me at the airport she had sent with them a paper napkin, with a large heart drawn on it to give to me. Underneath she had written, with perfect spelling, ‘I love you’.
Soon after that, Jamie-Leigh got involved with the underworld and began smuggling drugs. She was caught with cocaine strapped to her thighs, and is now serving a long sentence in a South American prison. I don’t know if we will ever meet again, but I will always feel she is a part of me.
My cousin Tory got married and lives with his wife and children in a house across the way from Granny Bettie. Noah is divorced and works as a bodyguard now.
Aunt Maudie had a stroke while she cleaned the kitchen, and Uncle Tory came home that night to find her dead on the kitchen floor. He was devastated.
It breaks my heart to know how many of our people are struggling, and turning to drugs or crime. A once proud race has been brought to its knees.
And what of the mythical King of the Gypsies?
The real truth is that there never has been a Romany king. Only the odd self-proclaimed fool, who ends up getting himself and his whole bloodline beaten to a pulp.
I wouldn’t change my life. If I hadn’t done all that I have done, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I am proud of my race, and what I am.
You can take the boy away from the Gypsies, but you can’t take the Gypsy out of the boy.
To my ball and chain. I love you Always.
To all those other Kids of the 80’s … Never Say Die.
And last of all, to you who read this book. I wrote this just for you.
Mikey
Five years ago MIKEY WALSH finally succumbed to staying put. London called him and it is the longest time he has ever lived in one place. He taught himself to read and write and now works at a nearby primary school, where he teaches art and drama, and also picks up the formal education h
e missed out on as a child. He proposed to his partner on the number 38 bus two years ago and they married last summer.
GYPSY BOY. Copyright © 2009 by Mikey Walsh.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, an Hachette UK company
eISBN 9781250011978
First eBook Edition : January 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walsh, Mikey.
Gypsy boy : my life in the secret world of the Romany Gypsies / Mikey Walsh.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
“First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton”—T.p. verso.
ISBN 978-0-312-62208-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-01197-8 (e-book) 1. Walsh, Mikey. 2. Romanies—England—Biography. 3. Young gay men—England—Biography. 4. Romanies—England—Social life and customs. 5. England—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
DX127.W35A3 2012
305.891’497041092—dc23
[B]
2011038168
First U.S. Edition: February 2012
