by Stef Penney
“What are you so excited about?”
“I’m not excited.”
Later, I go back home to find Mum and Ivo and Christo about to have supper. We quite often eat together, what with Mum working and Christo to take care of. Mum and Ivo are talking in low voices when I come in, and Christo’s watching telly. He cheers when he sees me. I stick out my hand, and he twines his fingers into mine: it’s our thing.
“Here’s trouble,” says Ivo. He used to say this when I was little, but it sounds a bit weird now that I’m fourteen. It reminds me that it’s been a while since he’s said it.
“You heard about this private detective?”
“Tchah.” Ivo rolls his eyes.
“It’s daft, them coming round now. What do they think they’re going to find out?”
This is Mum. From this I gather they’ve been talking about it, too.
“You’re supposed to be in Wisbech.”
Ivo grins at me.
“Yeah, well . . . could be, I suppose.”
“Great-uncle tell you he’s a Gypsy?”
“Yeah. Half, anyway.”
“I’ve never heard of a Gypsy private detective. Have you?”
“No. Fancy it, do you?”
“Dunno.”
Mum smiles. I’m glad she’s not too tired tonight. Sometimes when she’s been driving around doing deliveries all day, she’s so tired she can hardly speak. She just collapses on the settee and falls asleep after supper. She usually cheers up when Ivo and Christo are around, though. She and Ivo are good friends.
There is one thing, though, that I’m not glad about. None of us are. Christo hasn’t been very well. It’s been four weeks since we got back from Lourdes, and he hasn’t got any better. In fact, I think he’s got worse. He talks less, and seems weaker. He does almost nothing but lie around on the settee at Ivo’s or ours, looking at everything with eyes that seem too big for his face. He’s so small and thin—about half the size of other six-year-olds. And sometimes he doesn’t even look at things. He just lies there, and you can hear his breathing, as though he’s panting, even though he’s not moving at all. Sometimes I want to scream. Why can’t anyone do something?
How long does it take God to cure a six-year-old? I asked Ivo how long afterward before he started getting better, and he said he couldn’t really remember, but he thought it was so gradual you couldn’t really notice— which wasn’t very helpful.
I think we have to face the fact that there isn’t going to be any miracle, not this time. In fact, let’s face it, folks, it was all a big, fucking, stupid waste of time. And now what?
15.
Ray
The scrap of paper with Luella’s number on it is buried in the pile by the phone, where it’s been for some days. I know it’s there, but I sit by the phone for a couple long minutes before picking it up and dialing.
To my surprise it’s picked up almost immediately. Her voice sounds more relaxed than it did before, less defensive.
“Hi. It’s Ray Lovell.”
A pause.
“Oh.”
The defensiveness returns, along with reinforcements.
“I’m sorry to disturb you again, but I wondered if I could ask you some more questions?”
“I’ve got to go out. What is it?”
“Well, maybe we could meet? Whenever’s convenient. I can come to you if you like.”
“Did you see my brother?”
“Yes.”
I don’t say anything else. Perhaps she has some vestige of curiosity about him.
“I’ve got to go through Wimbledon. There’s a pub on the Broadway, the Green Man. Near the theater. I could meet you there at nine. For half an hour. That’s all.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Janko. I appreciate your taking the time. I’ll see you there.”
To be honest, I don’t know what she can tell me. I’m not even sure what I’m going to ask. Possibly, I’d be better off spying on the encampment down in Hampshire, although that sort of surveillance is extremely difficult, with no buildings or vehicles around to camouflage you. It would mean hopping about in the bushes with a long lens like an idiot. Tomorrow is always a better day to be an idiot.
This time she’s waiting for me; I’m on time, but she’s early, sitting at a corner table, smoking a cigarette. She’s dressed more casually, in jeans and a long baggy sweater that makes her look even smaller. Still the heels and lipstick, though; I have a feeling she doesn’t leave home without them.
“Thanks for meeting me, Miss Janko. Let me get you something.”
“Just a tea, please. And call me Lulu. I keep thinking you’re talking to someone else.”
“Lulu. Gotcha.”
I get a tea, and a half for myself. No overdoing it tonight.
“So how was my brother?”
“I didn’t realize he was in a wheelchair.”
She shrugs and sips her tea.
“Must make living on the road very difficult.”
“He’s got family to run around after him.”
“Still . . .”
“Did you find out anything about Rose?”
“Not really. I wanted to see Ivo, but Tene doesn’t want me talking to him. Said it would be upsetting. Where does Ivo travel?”
“With Tene, or always used to.”
“They said he was in the Fens.”
She shrugs again; the sharpness of the gesture—though nothing else about her—reminds me of Tene.
“Maybe he is.”
“You don’t know?”
“I told you, we don’t have much to do with each other. I haven’t seen them for . . . about three years.”
“You spoke to Tene, though?”
“Yeah. He is my brother.”
“Of course. I met your sister, too. And I . . . I got the impression that Ivo was there. Why should she and Tene hide him?”
Lulu frowns at me.
“You think they’re lying?”
“I think they’re protecting him. But why?”
“Like he said, I suppose he’s still upset about it. And if he doesn’t know anything . . .”
“People usually know more than they think they do.”
“Is that why you’re asking me where my nephew is? Even though I told you I don’t know?”
I smile in acknowledgment. “I suppose so. And you have a phone.”
She tuts, smiles, and looks at the ceiling.
Are we flirting? I ask myself.
“Rose buggered off a long time ago. She didn’t want anything to do with them. Why should they want anything to do with her? Or with anyone who wants to ask about her?”
I sip my half and find it almost empty. Her tea is still steaming.
“So, er, why don’t you see your family?”
Lulu sighs.
“You liked him, didn’t you?”
“Tene? I . . . He’s quite a charismatic figure.”
I suppose she’s right. I did like him.
“Yeah. Charismatic.”
She makes it sound like a dirty word.
“You don’t go round shouting that you’re a Gypsy, do you? Nor do I. But Tene does. Does this big act. Only it’s not even an act. When he thinks about anything, it’s Gypsy first, everything else second.”
She shakes her head, not meeting my eyes now.
“It’s not the beginning and end of everything to me. You can’t live like that anymore, can you? Going on about the old days and the ‘pure black blood.’ Like there ever was any.”
That phrase again.
“Is that something Tene cares about?”
“Yeah. Not just blood. The culture, you know—the life. Not being forced to settle in a house and just . . . disappear.”
“Like I have.”
“And me. I’m the traitor.”
“Traitor? That’s a strong word.”
She shrugs again. She isn’t going to rise to my prodding.
“There wasn’t going to be anything for me
in that life. A girl’s a slave. What have you got to look forward to? Get married, get beaten up. Not again, thanks. I’ve got my little house and my job, and it hasn’t been easy with the amount of school I got.”
“Were you close to your brother, as children?”
“God, no. He’s seventeen years older, so he was more like an uncle. When I was born, he’d already moved out on his own.”
“Any other brothers and sisters? Apart from Kath.”
“Another sister.”
“Ah.”
“I expect you’ll want her number, too.”
“That would be very helpful.”
“I doubt it. Sibby lives in Ireland. You’re welcome to give it a try.”
“I wanted to find out a bit about Christo’s illness. It seems that that might have frightened Rose off. Your brother didn’t say what it was, but he said there was no cure.”
“That’s right.”
Her face tightens. If she was flirting before, she isn’t now.
“He said others in the family had suffered.”
She drinks her tea.
“Yeah.”
“Sorry, I, em . . .”
She lights another cigarette, frowning at her recalcitrant lighter. She smokes too much, I think, or maybe just smokes during difficult conversations. She speaks quickly.
“We had two other brothers. Istvan died when he was a baby, and Matty . . . He wasn’t so bad, he made it to thirty.”
“God, I’m sorry. Is that why Tene . . .”
“No. No, he was in a road accident. Tene’s fine—in that way. But he and Marta had two sons before Ivo. Stevie . . . again, was only a baby. Milo was six.”
I can’t think of anything to say to this.
“They just took Christo to Lourdes. I suppose anything’s worth a try. It worked for Ivo.”
“Ivo was ill, too?”
“Yeah, when he was young. But he got better.”
“I thought you said there isn’t a cure.”
She shrugs. I like it when she shrugs, I decide.
“I dunno. Maybe Lourdes is the cure. Maybe he had something else. Not the same.”
“Is it just . . . boys?”
She looks up at me; her eyes are pained. I wish I wasn’t making her look like that.
“Yeah. Seems to be.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She puts herself together again. As if she’s held together with poppers: snap, snap, snap.
I wonder about her marriage. Did she have any children?
She looks down, checks her watch.
“I have to go to work.”
“Okay. What sort of work do you do?”
“Go-go dancer.”
“Oh, great.”
A brief, sarcastic smile.
“I’m a carer.”
“Oh, great.”
“I like it.”
“You work in a home?”
“Private.”
“Well . . . thanks for meeting me, and . . . talking to me.”
“Good luck.”
“Can I ring you again?”
It doesn’t come out quite how I meant it to.
“In case something else comes up.”
She shrugs. Her shoulders make me think of wings—she is unfurling them, taking off.
“Can’t stop you.”
She taps out of the bar, and I listen to the receding tick of her heels on the pavement, like time ebbing away.
It’s appalling, if what she says is true. I think it is true. It makes me think of something . . . the Russian Tsars—didn’t they have a disease that affected only the boys, and therefore the Tsar’s succession? Something to do with Queen Victoria, too, I think, but can’t remember what. My dad would have known. And if he didn’t, he would have looked it up. But my brother, Tom, got The Book of Knowledge. Jen said it smelled, and wouldn’t have it in the house.
16.
JJ
One of the worst things about living in a trailer is that you can’t ask people back to yours. I’ve noticed this at school, with girls, especially: they’ll be talking and stuff at the end of classes, or walking to the bus stop, and one of them might say casually, “Come back to my house. We can study/ have tea/listen to the Pet Shop Boys LP.” Easy. No big deal. Then they get on the bus and go and have a lovely time.
I never walk to the bus stop, because our site isn’t anywhere near a bus stop, so there’s not much point. Usually Mum picks me up, often in the van that she’s driving—which might be a florist’s van, or a van for delivering bread. Once, embarrassingly, she picked me up in a refrigerator truck with “Best Sausages” on the side in huge letters. Danny Sinclair and Ben Goldman—who else?—saw, and I was called Sausages for about a year afterward. Other times she picks me up in Granddad’s car, which is cool, as it’s a BM. Very occasionally Gran or Granddad come and get me—and that will be at whatever time suits them, so I’ve spent endless hours hanging around on street corners, looking suspicious, probably. Mum usually shouts at them later, but it doesn’t make them any quicker. Whenever she has a complaint against them they remind her that she’s lucky they took her—and me—back at all. I’m used to waiting.
Only once did I try inviting anyone back to our trailers. It was Stella Barclay, shortly after I started going to this school, when she seemed to be my friend. I don’t know whether Stella is still my friend or not. She is one of the nicest people at my school, and we’ve had some really good conversations. She likes the same sort of music as I do—she introduced me to The Smiths, who I love, and not just because my name is Smith. But now she’s become friends with a girl called Katie Williams, and when they’re together she doesn’t really talk to me. It’s like she doesn’t notice me anymore. So I don’t push myself onto her.
Anyway, this was last year. I’d told her that I lived in a trailer—this is when we were on the council site—and she seemed interested in it. So I asked Mum if I could invite a friend back for tea. She looked a bit wary but said of course I could, as long as I gave her some warning, so she could make it tidy and get something nice in to eat. So I asked Stella if she would like to, and she said yes. Then I asked Mum, and she said okay, what about tomorrow, and I told Stella, but that day she had a judo class, so I went back and forth until we had set a date—it was all quite complicated, mainly because of judo and clarinet and dance lessons. I don’t have any extra lessons. Then, on that day, Mum came to pick us up—on time, after I had stressed the importance of this to her about twenty-five times. In fact, she was early. She was very nice and friendly to Stella, and she had made an effort and put on a dress—the blue-and-gray one, which looks very nice on her. She seemed to know that it was important to me that she look like a nice mum, and I was really glad she did. Stella and she seemed to get on all right, but then we got to the site, and that’s when I realized that it was all a horrible, horrible mistake and I should never, ever have suggested it.
Stella looked around at the other trailers with a mixture of fear and fascination. I know that she’d never seen a Gypsy site before, and maybe she’d heard stories about how awful and dirty Gypsies were, or something. I suppose it did seem a bit weird, with all the trailers lined up on their concrete pads, and loads of cars, and piles of bin bags in a big heap rather than in a dustbin. There were lots of dogs running about. But it wasn’t dirty. Granddad came out of their trailer and stared at Stella in a rather unfriendly way, and even when I introduced them, and he said hello, she looked like she was scared of him.
We went into our trailer, which Mum had made look quite cheerful and nice. Everything was—as usual—clean and sparkling, and Mum made tea and bread and cheese. She’d bought some Mr. Kipling French Fancies, too.
Stella was really interested in the trailer. She looked at the kitchen, and exclaimed that there was no sink, and Mum told her how we wash things in different bowls and throw the dirty water outside. Because washing water is mokady, which is more than dirty. I mean, you wouldn’t wash your clothes, an
d then things that you put in your mouth—like forks—in the same bowl, because that’s disgusting. Isn’t it? Stella nodded and said, “Yes, I see.”
Obviously we couldn’t go into my room, because I don’t have one, so we sat on the settee at the end, with the stove lit, and Mum asked Stella boring, grown-up questions like what her favorite school subject was and how long her family had been living around here. For the first time ever, I felt really uncomfortable in our trailer: fidgety, like cheesy bugs were crawling all over me and there was nothing I could do about it. I began to feel that I could hardly breathe, and I thought I was going to explode. When Mum said she would go over to Gran’s and leave us for a bit, I thought I would die, even though all the time I had been secretly longing for her to shut up and go. There was a silence after she’d gone out. Stella kicked her heels against the bench seat.
“Do you really live here, both of you?”
Her voice was incredulous. Not mean or anything, just like she really couldn’t understand how we did it.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your bed?”
“This is it,” I said, indicating the bench we were sitting on.
“But don’t you get any privacy?”
I thought about this.
“Not much. I can pull this curtain here . . .”
I demonstrated, but it seemed to confine us both into such a small, airless space that I panicked and pulled it back immediately.
“I don’t think I could stand it. Not being able to go into my own room and shut the door. I mean, your mum’s really nice and everything, but not to be able to listen to music on your own, you know . . . What if you get into a bad mood?”
“It’s okay, really. I don’t think about it.”
“Oh.”
She smiled.
But I knew that from then on, I would think about it. I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it.
We had more tea and French Fancies, and talked about The Smiths, who were our joint favorite band, like we often did at school, but there was something in our conversation that hadn’t been there before, something hot and sour, that made me feel as if my hands had suddenly swelled up to twice their usual size. Like I was a freak.