by Mikey Walsh
I was a messed-up boy, and he was a dossa; both of us outcasts. But Kenny treated me like a human being, he cared what I thought and spoke about things other than fighting and money. He made me feel as if, just for a moment, I mattered, and for that I loved him.
15
Twelve-Year-Old Man
For the next few months we travelled. We managed to find a few Gypsy camps that would take us in, and we would stay for a few weeks, while my father and the other men found work.
With the dossas he’d had working for him down south no longer around, my father had only two people to put on a job: me – and him. I was almost twelve years old, and in Gypsy terms ‘of age’. It was time to go out with him and learn my trade.
No Gypsy man at that time was trained in how to do any kind of construction, building or home improvement work. But regardless of a lack of training or skills, they managed to make a very successful living from these trades.
Some were much more professional than others, but it was a rarity for a Gypsy man to do a good job for anyone. Especially if money were to change hands before a job was done; in that case the customer would almost certainly get nothing at all. And in some cases, given the state of the building work I’ve witnessed, they’d probably have been better off.
My father’s speciality was re-surfacing driveways, so this was the ‘trade’ I was to learn. On my first day out with him, buried beneath an extra-large boiler suit and unable even to grip a shovel correctly, I couldn’t help but think I was only there because he had no other choice. He didn’t want to be on a job with me any more than I wanted to be on one with him. But there was no one else, so we had to make it work somehow. Not that my father intended to do any actual work, as I soon discovered. His role was to be the foreman, do the talking, and order me around.
Our working day soon settled into a pattern. Thankfully by this time I had stopped wetting the bed, so I was spared the pain and humiliation of a public beating. Instead I would be woken at six and told to fill up the tar drums, roll them up onto the lorry and strap them down, then do a checklist of all the tools we needed for the day and make sure we had them at the ready. Once we set off, our first stop was the local quarry, where I would shovel a ton or so of pink grit onto the back of the lorry. It was around 70 per cent dust and I had to make sure it was well covered as even a slight rainstorm could ruin it. By the time we left the quarry each morning, I was painted head to toe, eyelashes to teeth, in a thick coat of hot pink paste.
After that my father would stop at a local baker to load up on custard tarts, pastries and iced buns. He was diabetic, but cheated like holy hell. His first communication with me would be a grudging offer of something from one of the bakery’s paper bags. That was the closest we came to a ‘Good morning, how are you?’ moment. I’d eat a doughnut or an iced bun while he, breathing heavily, sucked on several sweet cakes.
After the sugar binge was over, he would be ready for the hunt. Already exhausted, I would fall asleep to the strains of his Roy Orbison/Doris Day tape mix, while my father would scan the streets for his first ‘customer’. We’d thread in and out of small villages, looking for the perfect neighbourhood; one where the houses had driveways. Once he had found a likely house, my father would turn into a performance artist of extraordinary skill, with a tongue that rolled out lines as eloquently as a Shakespearian pro.
Animated, charming and gracious, the old bastard was a marvel to watch. He would greet the house-owner in such a familiar manner that it would convince them he was already an acquaintance. After several minutes of general chit-chat he would find just the right moment to hit them with the ‘offer of the day’. He had been working on a nearby project, he would explain, and had overestimated how much tarmac he would need. Rather than let it go to waste, he would tarmac the customer’s driveway for the ridiculously small sum of ten pounds.
Only the badly off, tight-fisted or gullible would fall for it, but there seemed to be no shortage of them around. But then my father was like a hunter; he bragged that he could smell a naive pensioner from miles away.
Taking advantage of an elderly person’s lack of company, he would even fool them into believing that his ‘bargain offer’ was all down to the fact that his own father had done their driveway many years before. With no idea whether he was telling the truth or not, most would give him the benefit of the doubt and nod happily in agreement.
And so we would set to work. I would scrape away the weeds while my father spread the barrels of watered-down tar over the driveway. Then, filling a wheelbarrow with the pink grit, I would have to spread it onto the drive as evenly and as thinly as possible.
My father gave orders and I obeyed. Other than that, we didn’t speak. I was expected to know how to do everything; there was no room or time for mistakes. We had to get the job done and be gone as soon as we could.
Once we had finished, the driveway would look good. But we knew that as soon as it rained the grit would turn to sludge, and all that would be left was a washed-out mess. With no time to lose, the victim would be called out to inspect their wonderful new drive. Then, once they had admired it, he would hit them with the actual price, bumping up the total to ten pounds a square metre. When they protested, he would claim it had been their mistake for mishearing what he had told them in the first place.
When we returned from work I had to re-fill the tar barrels he had bought, or sometimes stolen from a motorway road works area. I would often be on the back of the lorry all evening, separating one fresh barrel of tar into three empties, then, topping up all four with the water hose to get more distance out of it.
By the end of the evening I would fall into bed, exhausted, only to go through the same thing again the next day, often seven days a week.
All of the convoy were dealing in similar lines. Some did the same as my father, others sold carpets, tiled roofs, put in windows or did any other kind of job that could be botched to look good long enough to extort cash.
Before we moved north, my father had dealt in stolen cars as a sideline. Together with one of his dossas, Wayne, who had been a professional car thief before he came to work for us, my father would drive us through a local town, looking for the right kind of cars. Souped-up vans, or anything that had baby boots, boxing gloves, horseshoes or rosaries hanging from the mirror were left alone. These things were like a kind of secret tag that let fellow Gypsies know not to steal from one of their own. My father and Wayne would look for posh cars with any hint of a bag or credit card inside. When they spotted one, Wayne would be let loose to get into the car and follow us home in it.
The next day, Wayne and my mother would pose as a rich couple, going into expensive chain stores and spending as much as they could on the credit cards stolen from the car. They would have spent the night before practising the signature on the card and getting into character. My father had them buy every household appliance and item of clothing we could possibly make a future buck on, following them around the shops and pointing out what he wanted. Wayne had burnt lips and fingers from his endless smoking, but with a major scrub up and an Armani suit, bought with an earlier stolen card, he could almost pass as a gentleman; unlike my father who looked like the Godfather in the gutter in whatever he put on. My mother’s costume – a pink pencil skirt suit with colossal shoulder pads and a large-brimmed white hat – could have come straight from Krystle Carrington from her favourite show.
While the two of them spent on the stolen cards, the stolen car would be ‘ringed up’ – my father’s term for disguising the car and selling it on.
When we moved north Wayne chose not to come, so the car trade became no more than an occasional sideline for my father, and his main business was the re-surfacing. We would work an area until work ran dry, or a customer involved the police.
A few months into our northern tour, we had settled on a campsite and I was shovelling some well-earned beans on toast into my mouth, when a stranger marched up to our plot. He was young and stock
y, with a huge gut that dangled below his vest and greasy hair that flopped about his face. He stood in the doorway of the trailer.
‘You Frank’s boy?’
A forkful of toast lodged in my throat and my heart began to thump as I realised what was coming. The Walsh reputation had not, after all, been left down south. This was my first challenger.
‘Yep.’
Without another word he squared up; his greasy curls whipped at his forehead and his belly jiggled as he danced around and jabbed the air with his fists. ‘Get up,’ he hissed.
My father, Frankie and Aunt Minnie came out of the other caravan, all three with cigarettes in mouths. At thirteen, Frankie was now an ‘out of the closet’ smoker.
I put down my plate. ‘What have I done?’
The boy didn’t answer; he just kept on jiggling and beckoning me to come.
‘Where have you come from, Mush?’ my father asked him.
The boy paused and then bowed as if he were meeting royalty. ‘Liverpool, uncle. I’m Basher Bill’s boy.’
My father tilted his chin upwards in acknowledgement.
‘Well at least the little bastard’s polite,’ muttered Aunt Minnie.
‘How old are you?’ Frankie asked.
‘Seventeen.’
‘Piss off, shitty arse, the boy’s not old enough yet,’ said Aunt Minnie.
But my father yanked me out of my chair. ‘Put your hands up, Mikey.’
Aunt Minnie’s eyes rolled. ‘Frank, he’s a child.’
My father didn’t even look at her.
‘Mikey, if you don’t get up and fight that boy, I’m gonna kick you all the way to Dover.’
I took a step forward and the boy began to bounce again. Reluctantly I mirrored his stance and then rushed at him. Straight into a punch. After four or five more I was down and the fight was over. I didn’t bleed. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even open my mouth. I got up from the concrete, brushed myself off and sat back inside, with Frankie and Aunt Minnie following closely behind.
My father gave the boy a begrudging ‘congratulations’, and shook his hand. Then, as the boy smiled proudly, my father drew his fist back and punched him in the teeth. The boy slammed into the side of his van and slid to the floor. He got up and clambered into it like a terrified rabbit.
‘Now go and bring your fat cunt father down here,’ my father yelled.
The van sped from the camp in a cloud of dust.
My father stuck his head through the open window of the trailer, wiping the dust from his eyes. ‘Get out here.’
I hesitated. I knew that look. He was enraged and looking for someone to vent his fury on. He let out a grunt. ‘Get. Out. Here.’
As I stood, uncertain what to do, he came charging towards the door.
‘Run, Mikey,’ shouted Frankie.
I leaped for the door, foolishly hoping I could outrun him. Seconds later the toe of his boot kicked into my tailbone. I fell, face first, and my chin smashed against the concrete.
He laughed. ‘Go on then, cry for your old dad.’
I crawled off the plot, choking up blood, and hobbled away.
‘You’re useless, no good even as a dog,’ he called after me.
I gained speed, heading towards the nearby lorry park where Kenny’s trailer was. As a mere dossa he wasn’t allowed to join us in the camp. An injury in the centre of my face pumped blood backwards across my cheeks as the wind hit my skin and the air whistled past my ears. The inside of my mouth had filled with blood, but I couldn’t open my lips to spit.
I turned into the lorry park and slammed against Kenny’s trailer. I tapped at the windows, blood dribbling down from the sides of my mouth. I banged on the door and tried the handle. It was locked. There was no reply. Kenny was still out at work with Uncle Matthew.
I turned around and dived between the wheels of our lorry, where I curled into a tight ball, hoping that my father wouldn’t come to find me.
I held my breath. Held my anger. Held my tears. I trapped it all behind my teeth, locking it behind my jaw, my neck, my throat and my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut to stop the tears.
I hated myself. I hated my life. I hated what I had become – a punch bag, a dog, a slave and a lost cause. A joke, to my father, his family and the whole Gypsy race.
I have to leave this place, I thought. I don’t belong here. But at only twelve, where could I go? This life is all that I knew. I was trapped.
With that realisation I could no longer hold back the tears. I tightened my mouth, sobbing angrily, burbling blood down my neck and my chin as I tried to catch my breath. I felt a loose piece of cartilage suck up into my nasal passage and soon my fear and anger and grief were overshadowed by the waves of pain.
I dug my fingernails into my forearms. After the initial shock had gone I realised that my nose was broken and my two front teeth had pierced through the skin beneath my bottom lip, fastening my mouth shut. I fiddled with the lumps in my mouth with my tongue, clearing away the skin tangled between the gaps in my teeth.
I heard the sounds of UB40 and heavy wheels crushing over the grit on the road. My mother was back from town with Henry-Joe and Jimmy. Minutes later I heard the scuttle of feet across the stones and high-pitched whispers between intakes of smoke.
My mother and Aunt Minnie.
They moved around the car park, calling my name softly. Then my mother spotted me. She leaned over me, tutting. ‘Let’s have a look.’
She lifted my head and the pain made me hiss. A lump of blood sprang out, catching her neck. She smacked it off as if it was a mosquito.
‘Minnie, come here,’ she said. ‘Hold his chin a minute, will you?’
My mother pulled at my lips and I screamed through my teeth, which remained firmly embedded.
They each grabbed one of my arms. As I rose to my feet, Aunt Minnie tried to brush me down. ‘Oh, his lovely clothes, Bettie – look.’
‘Never mind his clothes. Let’s get back and get his mouth open.’
We walked back, the two women blanketing me with their bodies.
‘Your father’s gone to the pub with Uncle Jaybus,’ my mother said. ‘You’ve no need to worry.’
Back at the trailer, they lowered me to the ground, next to the outside tap. Then they started to manoeuvre my lips, slapping at each other’s hands and arguing as if they were trying to solve a Rubik’s cube.
After a few minutes of no progress, my mother stopped. ‘Get me the tin out of the cupboard,’ she said.
Aunt Minnie dashed off into the trailer to search for my mother’s magic tin. I wasn’t sure that her usual rub with a slug or piece of bloody meat would work on this. She wiped her red palms across the chest of her sweater and looked at me, pondering, while we both listened to Aunt Minnie, slamming cupboards and swearing to herself.
My mother scanned the concrete and handed me an old dustpan brush. ‘Take this and squeeze on it when it’s really bad, all right?’
I nodded, gripping it with both hands and trying to focus on anything other than the terrible pain. I stared into my mother’s eyes, inches from my own: black and shiny as boiled tar. She focused on the wound, frowning and then with one, big yank, she freed my teeth.
Aunt Minnie arrived with the tin and as my mother began to rummage through it, Aunt Minnie pulled a cigarette box from her cleavage, took out a cigarette and lit it. She took several drags and then tossed it away, before crouching down to make some butterfly stitches from band-aid and tape as my mother dabbed at the wound with antiseptic and cotton wool.
It took several weeks for my face to heal, but if I hoped that first challenge would be a one-off, or that my father might give up on making me fight, then I was soon to discover I was sadly mistaken.
We kept on moving locations, and everywhere we went there were challengers. Boys my age were seldom interested in being friends. Every camp seemed to have at least one group of over-confident young bucks with a point to prove and I would have to fight whoever came to my door.
I never won. This infuriated my father, who would take it upon himself, after every losing match, to kick me while I was down, and then head off to take on my challengers, their fathers and anyone else who cared to join in.
Soon I was living in dread of confrontation, with challengers, or with my father. Once we were back from work, I tried to stay out of his way. And every evening, when Uncle Matthew came back to his trailer from the lorry park, I would head off to the one place I felt welcome: Kenny’s trailer.
16
Take Me With You
If you really want to infuriate a Gypsy man, and land yourself in a major fight, call him gay. The term is often used as an insult in the non-Gypsy world, but to Gypsy men, who pride themselves on being red-blooded males, there can be no bigger put-down.
I got used to my father calling me a poof as a sign of his contempt. He laughed, spat and screamed a dictionary of ‘homo’ terms at me a hundred times a day. And before I had turned ten years old, Frankie had begun doing it too. To hear her laugh as she spoke those words drove a stake into my heart and a rift between us.
The rift had first started during an argument over a can of Coke. Not content with calling me a poof, she had laughed and called me Joseph. It wasn’t because Joseph was gay; no one knew that he was. Frankie called me Joseph because he was a big, fat, ugly, moody, morbid, unmarried man who ate raw meat and to be like him would be any boy’s worst nightmare. What she didn’t know was that she was comparing me to the man who had caused me so much suffering. Incensed, I had stabbed her in the hand with a pencil and after that she called me Joseph whenever she wanted to get at me.
I can’t remember when I first realised that I really was gay. In some ways the knowledge had always been there, deep inside me. But of course I tried to deny it to myself, desperate not to be the one thing that would totally destroy me as a Gypsy. But as I approached puberty, I couldn’t pretend to myself any more. It wasn’t anything to do with what my uncle had done to me, but knowing that he too was attracted to the same sex left me feeling even more cursed. I lived every day, hating myself for being a freak among Gypsies. I knew I must never, ever let my family know. Although my father called me a poof every day, if he thought it was true, rather than just the worst insult he could think of, he would go ballistic and would, almost certainly, kill me.