by Mikey Walsh
But there was no getting out of the wedding of our Aunt Nancy and Uncle Matthew. Aunt Nancy was our mother’s youngest sister, the image of Granny Bettie, with exactly the same temperament. She would sometimes baby-sit for us, and the minute our parents’ backs were turned she ordered us about like slaves, demanding that we make her a sandwich. With a bag of crisps. And a tea. And a glass of Coke. And then another bag of crisps. She would eat continuously, then throw me and Frankie out in the cold to play.
At her wedding Frankie and our cousins Olive and Twizzel were the bridesmaids and, when the pageboy from Uncle Matthew’s side of the family fell ill, I was thrust into the role at the last minute. The boy’s outfit was half my size, so my mum and Granny Bettie had to pull together to squeeze me into his little navy sailor suit, complete with Donald Duck hat. For the whole day, rather than slipping away for my usual bug hunt and catnap, I had to join the girls (who were dressed like the Lullaby League) in throwing petals on the ground wherever our fat aunt stomped. We got our revenge for being made to look like Munchkins by making evil faces and V signs in all the photos, before we were all found out and given a good public spanking.
While we didn’t care for Aunt Nancy at all, we loved our mother’s older sister Aunt Minnie: a chain-smoking kleptomaniac who came over twice a week to take our mother, Frankie and me out on a day trip to the nearest decent shopping centre.
Aunt Minnie would exit her Ford Capri in an avalanche of smoke, ash and tumbling, floor-length, hand-me-down mink coat, which would get caught up in the sharp points of her red heels as she clicked along the tarmac towards our trailer door.
She’d tug the mass of her coat through the front door as she climbed in.
‘Morning, my little robbers. Where’s your mum?’
Our mother would call out from the bedroom, ‘Red shoes no knickers Minnie, ain’t you ever heard that saying?’
‘Well who says I am wearing knickers,’ Minnie would laugh.
She’d spark up another cigarette and crash down on the couch next to me. Her voice was almost always indistinct because of the fag hanging from her lips.
‘Make your old aunt a cuppa coffee, my babe,’ she’d say to Frankie.
Frankie and I called her Aunt Cruella. At twenty-one (a near spinster in Gypsy terms), she had gone on two dates with Jaybus, an Elvis lookalike from Birmingham, and on the third she had married him. Having borrowed his father’s car and worn a good suit on each occasion, he had convinced Aunt Minnie that she had caught herself a millionaire and would be set for life. Unfortunately, Uncle Jaybus was in fact a socially inept rag-and-bone man with a voice like Goofy in the cartoons. Frankie and I loved him. And, despite the initial disappointment, so did Aunt Minnie.
Once she realised her husband was not going to be able to look after her in the manner she wished for, she set about finding her own means of support – choring or stealing. She would tell friends to let her know what they wanted and when she had got a big enough list together, off she would go on the prowl. Having only one child, Romaine, who was a couple of years younger than us, she appointed me and Frankie as her accomplices. On big jobs, she would sometimes stop by our uncle Alfie’s to pick up our cousins, Olive and Twizzel. The two of them were a year apart, like me and Frankie, but unlike us they couldn’t stand the sight of one another. From the moment they got into Aunt Minnie’s car they would be slyly hitting one another and only the promise of McDonalds would shut them both up.
A trip with our aunt Minnie was always an adventure. While our mother was doing her weekly shop in the supermarket, Frankie and I would push Romaine’s buggy behind Aunt Minnie, who would sweep into a shop, swish her mink about, and, in an accent reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher’s, bellow for the nearest sales assistant.
As Aunt Minnie spoke to the assistant, she would ‘browse’ the shelves, picking up each item she wanted us to take, and giving it a shake before placing it back on the hanger. We would load the pram, and our pockets, while Aunt Minnie dragged a hefty pile off to the changing room, with the hapless assistant in tow.
She would re-emerge several minutes later.
‘Did you find anything, Miss?’ the assistant would ask.
‘No,’ Aunt Minnie would declare, as she swished her coat. ‘It was all total rubbish.’ And she would walk out, her nose in the air and leave the shop empty handed, but double her original size. If she was discovered, she would scream ‘Shav!’ (run). Frankie would grab me by the arm, then, pushing Romaine’s buggy like a battering ram through the main doors, we would charge out into the crowds. If we were all separated, we all knew to meet back at Aunt Minnie’s car. Sometimes she overtook us, ramming people out of our path with her great fur-clad shoulders and screaming that the store detective on her tail was a maniac trying to kill her, in the hope that some gullible bystander might wrestle him to the ground.
Back at the car park, Aunt Minnie took off the fur and hurled it into the boot. With a cigarette hanging from her lips, she would squirm around in the driver’s seat, peeling off her layers, which usually included around six tops, three pairs of slacks and an evening gown.
Once we all got home, Aunt Minnie would stay around long enough for a couple of coffees before carting her goods back to camp to sell for the best price. Since it was 100 per cent profit, she was able to sell for knock-down prices, and there was always a queue for her wares.
We loved our outings with Minnie, which were often hilarious and always an adventure. Far less fun were the outings to our father’s loud and overbearing family. But our visits to them were inescapable. Twice a week we piled into the van and drove to the home of my father’s older brother Tory.
Tory Manor, as it was known by all, was the most palatial home within a twenty-mile radius. Granddad Noah and Uncle Tory had bought it with the plan that, with their wives and Noah and Ivy’s youngest son, Joseph, they could live there together. But after just three days Granddad, miserable in a home that didn’t have wheels, refused to live in it any longer.
He set up home with Granny Ivy, their fifteen-year-old Jack Russell, Sparky, and Uncle Joseph in a brand-new, thirty-five-foot, bright pink Winnebago-style caravan at the top of the paddock behind the main house. This was their dream home, and they spared nothing on the decor. A swarm of fake butterflies the size of cats were nailed along the walls, a giant dust ruffle built entirely out of curved bright red bricks surrounded the caravan’s base, and each of its two entrances spewed steps that twirled like helter-skelters to the ground. The paddock was resurfaced, and given a separate entrance off the road that led up to the main house, so that Granddad Noah could keep his prized Rolls-Royce within a few feet of the living-room window.
Once they had settled in, Granddad Noah and Granny Ivy were delighted, as were Uncle Tory and his family, who got the main house to themselves.
The caravan was Granny Ivy’s pride and joy and she liked to keep it immaculate. But as she was so small she was unable to reach most of the table-tops in her new home, she had her sister Tiny over to help out with the daily chores. Our Aunt Tiny shared the same throaty cackle, penchant for gold teeth and love of fur-trimmed moccasins as her sister. But in all other respects they were utterly different. Tiny stood as tall and broad as a wardrobe and could have used Granny Ivy as a hand puppet. As well as the moccasins, she wore a pink floral pinny that she never took off. It had two large pockets that draped just below her huge and low-slung breasts; one for her yellow rubber gloves, and the other for her cigarettes and solid gold lighter in the shape of a horse’s head.
Aunt Tiny had given up on the ‘Gypsy woman of a certain age’ black hair-dye regime. Instead she bore a large white curly Afro, which made her look like a circus clown. Every day she would arrive at the caravan and whiz around, duster in her yellow-gloved hand, scrubbing everything from waist-height upward, while Granny Ivy did everything below.
Unfortunately for Granny Ivy, her end of the deal also meant washing the dog. Sparky had been bought by Noah as an anniver
sary present for her, but sadly the two developed an instant mutual hatred. Sparky spent every day lying in the darkness underneath the couch, waiting for Ivy to pass by so that he could jump out and bite her on the backside. To add to his annoyance, for the past three years he had been unable to poo without the aid of Joseph and a rubber glove. With Joseph being the only family member willing to do such a chore, the old dog had warmed to him and would scarcely leave his side.
Although the great house was just yards away, the whole family would always gather in the pink caravan every Friday evening, when Granddad and Uncle Tory would host a cock-fighting tournament out in the vast gardens. Each week several cockerels would fight to the death … or until Granddad Noah put the loser out of its misery by decapitating it with the end of a shovel.
Uncle Tory’s wife, Aunt Maudie, who lived in pink-velour tracksuits, see-through high heels and had enormous fake breasts, would sooner have dropped dead than have the ‘riff-raff’ that came along to these fights set foot inside her home, so she made us kids – Frankie and me, Tory and Noah and their twin sisters Patti and Violet – gather twigs and set up a camp fire that would keep the men warm and well away from her house until the party was over. Our reward was the marshmallows she would give us to cook over the fire.
Although Patti and Violet were a year younger than me, they were both twice my size. The Walsh clan commented constantly that Frankie and the girls looked like triplets, and they did, but in truth, this owed less to genetics than to the fact that, much to our mother’s annoyance, Aunt Maudie was a serial copycat, and her two girls were given exactly the same hairstyles and clothes as Frankie.
There was always a rowdy crowd, most of whom were fellow trainers from the boxing club up the road where Uncle Tory spent a lot of his time. Some of the visitors would bring their own cockerels, but the majority just came along to watch. All of the men would make bets, which would all be handled by Uncle Tory, who also charged a joining fee to make a bit of extra profit.
Most of the fighting birds were caged in home-made hutches, strapped down into the rear of the lorries. My uncle Duffy (like most of our ‘uncles’, not an uncle at all) kept his in a boarded-up dog kennel on the back of his Ford pick-up. One week he arrived with a new cockerel named Red. It was as big as a chair, with a sharpened beak, which Uncle Duffy had filed down himself, and not one feather on his body. When Uncle Duffy opened that passenger door, we kids ran for our lives, for fear his pterodactyl of a cockerel would peck our eyes out.
After several weeks as reigning champion, we watched old Red get torn apart by a sneaky, fully feathered newcomer. Frankie, the twins and I huddled on top of the old well watching, as the two birds clucked, hissed, pecked and sprayed blood all over the lawn.
I could never erase the guilt I felt for not jumping in and trying to save the losing chicken. Often, unable to stand the suffering any more, we kids would go into the house to watch Loony Tunes on TV. But as old Red fought his last, none of us could move. The twins covered their eyes as Frankie stared, transfixed but still chomping away, her hand dipping in and out of her bag of marshmallows.
It wasn’t long before the younger bird finally pecked through old Red’s neck and he had to face the final relief of Granddad Noah’s shovel. There was a loud cheer and the passing of money among the men as Old Noah gathered up Red on the spoon of the shovel and tossed him into the fire.
Frankie put down her marshmallows and walked over to the flames. She wanted to see the bird close up for the first and last time without running away in terror. But as she stepped up to the fire, the great chicken’s flaming corpse leaped from it with a wild scream. We children shouted in terror and the crowd ran in all directions as the bird, its head hanging by a thread, darted across the garden in a crazy dance of death. Only the men – my father, Uncle Tory, Old Noah and a few of the others – laughed their heads off, as the rest of us scattered.
In a bid to escape the madness of the cock fights and the pink trailer, I would often wander off alone into the extensive grounds of Tory Manor. Scattered among them were giant flowers, curved willows, ivory-barked trees and a set of curious stone dancers, each frozen in a wonderful gesture. Over time, many of them had been swallowed up in the heavy foliage, and others had been disfigured or decapitated by one of young Tory or Noah’s hunting weapons. As well as their Samurai swords, catapults and pellet guns, the boys had a harpoon gun, which they fired into trees, statues, and even unsuspecting pigeons. I’d had a go once, but misfired, getting the teeth of the harpoon trapped three inches below the surface of a tree root just inches from my toes.
Like my mother, I was at my happiest alone. And in the vast grounds of Tory Manor I could sing to myself at the top of my lungs without being heard, and make believe that this land was my kingdom.
Beyond the rotting tennis court and the chicken-fighting arena was a hedgerow maze with a Koi pond at its heart. The sound of the fountain that sprang from the pond would beckon as I wound my way through the maze. Above the fountain a white marble mermaid sat on a rock, reaching out to all those who had made it around the final corner of the maze. The paving that surrounded her home was damp and furry with moss and I would sit cross-legged by the side and watch, fascinated as the great golden fish in the pond appeared just beneath the surface.
Granddad Noah loved a get-together even more than most Gypsies, and would find any old excuse to invite family and friends to the pink trailer. Most Sundays we gathered there for Sunday dinner.
Inside the trailer the lounge was a shrine to the family and its achievements. Family portraits and celebrity-signed boxing gloves hung in every spare gap on the pale walls, while trophies won by my father and Uncle Tory were dotted among the Crown Derby plates, teapots and china cups that were displayed on every shelf.
The bright red leather three-piece suite was festooned with yards of home-made lace, and six crystal vases, that stood a good foot taller than Granny Ivy, were lined up across the window shelf like a regiment of jewelled cannons.
Granny Ivy’s spot was a central, throne-like chair, made especially for her. It had huge armrests and a footstool to help her climb up into the high cushioned seat that put her at the same height as everyone else. Next to her chair, a tiny arm’s reach away, was her breathing machine; a torpedo of green copper, with a motor-bike engine, a long pipe and a gas mask, which she would attach to her face at regular intervals.
My father and Granddad Noah would always take the two lace-covered armchairs that faced the TV, while the other men perched on the sofa or around the room. Aunt Tiny, Aunt Prissy, my mother and any other wives would sit the other end of the room around the dining table and Granny Ivy would serve up either her ‘90 per cent turnip’ roast or a traditional Gypsy favourite known as Jimmy Grey, which consisted of swede, onions, animal fat, liver, beefsteak, chicken and pork, all shallow fried and served up with a heavily buttered crusty loaf, with a ladle of the leftover dripping from the tray to dip it in.
Guests would outdo themselves in telling far-fetched stories, while Granny Ivy, Joseph, Granddad Noah and my father would all take turns passing out cold. Sometimes they all fell asleep together in mid-conversation, having bored each other to sleep. Our mother and Aunt Prissy would be left to say the goodbyes to any other guests and help Aunt Tiny clean up the mess. After which they would empty their make-up bags and rummage through closets for anything we kids could use to give our sleeping victims a full makeover.
Granny Ivy, being a woman, was never as fun to make-up and Joseph’s place next to the dreaded Sparky always got him off lightly. So every week, either our father or Granddad Noah would wake up to find themselves wearing Minnie Mouse ears and a full face of slap.
In between the food, the stories, the re-runs of matinee westerns and trying not to stare as Joseph, an ugly, moody mountain of a man, gorged himself on packets of raw bacon, Frankie and I would be asked to get up and sing for the family.
It was a tradition at any Gypsy gathering for those prese
nt to sing a song, and everyone had their own personal favourite, ready for the moment when they were asked to get up. Matthew Docherty or Slim Whitman tracks were most popular among the men, and a party was never complete without at least five women knocking out a pitch-perfect Patsy Cline hit. Granddad Noah sometimes paid me and Frankie a pound to sing, simply to save everyone from yet another rendition of ‘Honky Tonk Angels’ or ‘Crazy’.
Frankie’s regular solo was a Gypsy song, ‘Blackbird, I Av’ee’, which always went down well, and mine was a Dean Martin number, ‘Ol’ Scotch Hat’, a song that I had learned from our mother.
Our mother’s voice was a phenomenal instrument. She was able to mimic any great singer she chose. People always asked her to do Patsy Cline, because she did it so well, but she could also knock out a brilliant Nancy Sinatra, doing ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking’ and many country favourites. She was pestered endlessly to sing at parties.
Frankie and I would finish the party with ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’, by which point it was always past midnight and tired children and merry adults would pile into cars and trucks.
These visits to Tory Manor and the pink trailer were the social highlight of our week. We seldom went on family outings, although from time to time our father took us to the local safari park. He would make all of us get under a blanket in the back of his lorry, then say at the kiosk that he was working on the grounds and they’d wave him in. Once inside we’d climb into the front and Frankie and I would point excitedly at the animals.
In the summer we would all meet at Uncle Tory’s house and then drive in convoy down to the seaside where we spent the whole day. The men and the children swam, while the women sat, fully clothed, on the beach, gossiping and smoking. It wasn’t considered decent for them to strip off.
Unlike the others, I was afraid of the sea. I couldn’t go near it without the theme tune of the film Jaws popping into my head. The horrific image of the great shark eating people alive had lodged in my head when our father sat us in front of the film and I was never able to forget it. So instead of swimming I spent hours looking around the rocks for crabs, which I would bring home and keep in a bucket on the doorstep.