The Girl in the Painted Caravan (17 page)

But despite how unhappy we all were in our new circumstances, Mummy was determined to make the best of the situation. One morning, a lorryload of nursery soil was delivered, along with a vanload
of plants. My mother, much to the amazement of everyone on the bombsite, set to and built a garden around the bus and the vardo. She wanted to make it feel more like a home for us, as she herself
felt like a fish out of water here. There were around two dozen wagons scattered on the site, a few belonging to gorger people who weren’t travellers but just wanted somewhere to live.

One couple who were parked quite near us, were called Mr and Mrs Ben. She had been in a horrific accident and her face looked as though it had melted. Her eyes were like currants in a bun. One
would have thought she would be a depressed person, but she was chirpy and comical and had a very handsome husband who worshipped her. They seemed to be so happy and they had two little children.
Even now I still admire the spirit of Mrs Ben and the love that this family so obviously shared.

Two doors down was a coalman, Mr Clark, who had a very dirty-looking wife. She had long, black, greasy hair which hung down her back. Her podgy face was covered in blackheads and she stank of
stale pee. She had a little girl of about three years old who apparently never saw the light of day or got any fresh air. We were told that she never went out to play and was never taken for walks.
We would see her poor little face pressed to the windowpane every day, looking desperate for any sort of interaction with the outside world.

Being such a large woman, no one knew that Mrs Clark was expecting again, so the whole community was surprised when Mr Clark announced they had a new baby girl. About three weeks later, my
mother, returning from shopping, walked past the caravan and heard a baby screaming alarmingly. She ran back to our vardo, dumped her shopping, went back to the Clarks’ wagon and began
banging loudly on the door. When there was no answer, she went inside and a few seconds later fell out of the door, spewing and coughing, her eyes watering. She took a few deep breaths and then
flew back into the caravan, and what she described afterwards was disgusting.

The baby had fallen off the filthy bed onto the floor. The entire floor, Mummy said, was covered in faeces. Piles of it everywhere. The three-year-old was, as usual, looking out of the window,
as white as milk and, like the baby that was screaming, as naked as the day she was born. Mrs Clark was asleep on the bed, hugging a gin bottle. My mother picked up the baby and placed her next to
her mother, where it at least looked cleaner than the floor. Mummy came straight out and called the authorities and later we watched them go into the vardo, fully expecting them to bring the
children out and put them into care. By now, the other occupants of the vardos and some gorgers from nearby houses were standing around with folded arms in huddles, gossiping and waiting to see
what was going to happen. We were told to stay indoors. Mummy closed the door, but we peeped through the windows, watching the proceedings. The authorities left the wagon without the children, much
to our astonishment. It was unbelievable.

When Mr Clark came home, he spent three days scrubbing and cleaning the caravan. He had apparently been told that if he didn’t keep it clean, the children would be taken to a home.

A week later, the baby died. We watched a tiny white coffin being delivered to the caravan and, to our utter horror, it was carried out and placed on a coal lorry. The family climbed into the
cab and drove off to the cemetery. The memory of that little white coffin being loaded onto the coal lorry has stayed with me all my life.

On the few occasions when Daddy
was
home, more and more rows erupted and Mummy started to feel happier when he was away, as she knew her children wouldn’t have to witness the
tension between them, which had become all too obvious.

Although my father had many gorger friends that he had met through work and, since arriving in Coventry, in the pub who he would wine and dine with, my mother did not. Daddy liked it this way
and it was almost like he was living a double life. Because Mummy had never mixed with gorgers, she was beginning to feel more and more isolated without her family and other travelling people
around her. Things got a bit better when a couple of families we’d met at Hearsall Common pulled up onto the site. They’d decided to settle down, send their children to school and open
some hot dog stands locally. I was over the moon, as now I had three girls my own age to play with, and Mummy was glad to have other women she could talk to.

Still, she didn’t want her children growing up in the gorger way and Daddy used this as another way of keeping her completely reliant on him. She was beginning to feel like a prisoner. She
was even more horrified when she received several visits from the school board, who were trying to insist that Nathan and I went to school. Daddy was fined several times for not complying.

She also knew it was only a matter of time before her husband overreached himself financially. He always did. History had repeated itself far too many times, and the part where he spent more
than he was earning to impress those around him was coming again. He had already bought an American Studebaker car and half a dozen bespoke suits from the best tailors around. Who was he trying to
impress? Mummy knew it wasn’t her.

I’m sure outsiders would laugh and comment on the fact that, as someone who gave readings, she should have foreseen that it wouldn’t work, but when you are so close to something,
it’s hard to see the obvious for yourself. From the outside looking in, we see things so much clearer. And besides, where our own lives are concerned, we all want to believe in the fairy
tale, don’t we?

Daddy never spent any time with us children, and if he did it was only to tease us or show off some fancy new gadget or car he had bought. As I gradually became more and more aware that he
wasn’t what a father should be, Mummy could see in my eyes that I’d been let down by him.

Mummy could never forget the day, years before, when she had cooked fish for the family. Money had been tight back then, but she had managed to find enough cash to buy something nutritious for
her children. As she served up the mackerel and went back to the kitchen, she heard my father say to me, ‘Don’t eat the brown bit of the fish, child. It will poison you, don’t you
know?’ I was just a child at the time and didn’t know any better than to believe everything my father told me. My stomach turned and even though I tried to pick at the lighter bits of
the fish, I was worried about what they also might do to me and soon pushed the plate away.

Within minutes, Daddy had picked up my plate and was eating as much of the fish as he could stuff into his mouth, brown bits and all! What kind of a man takes the food from his child’s
plate when they’re hungry? My father’s kind, unfortunately.

Mummy knew my father’s businesses would go under eventually; they all did sooner or later. That, she hoped, would be her chance to be the main breadwinner again and to get us back to her
family and the safety of the Romany way of life.

With everything that was going on between my parents, I remember feeling at this time that I had become a nanny to Nathan and the twins. Worse, I felt as if I was getting the blame for
everything; whatever I did, I would somehow finish up being in trouble for it. I remember, when preparing for a journey, packing some of my mother’s Crown Derby china. I wrapped each piece
individually in thick newspaper, but when we arrived at our destination, several of the best pieces were broken. That kind of thing is one of the hazards of travelling, but even though my mother
was very good about it, I was terribly upset. I tried to make amends when she and my father were out by getting hold of some glue to stick the pieces back together again. It was a fiddly job and,
while concentrating all my attention on the china I was fixing, I forgot about the pot of glue, which got knocked over and spilled its contents on the carpet.

I tried to mop it up with a damp tea towel, but that made it set even more quickly, so I tried a dry tea towel. That didn’t work either, so I put the tea towels in a tub with some soap
powder to try to boil the glue out of them, and I got on my hands and knees to scrape the carpet clean. Just as I seemed to be making a little progress, the pot boiled over and there were suds
everywhere, spilling down the cooker and onto the carpet and, incidentally, on me. Feeling like I was in a Laurel and Hardy film, I turned down the gas to let the pot simmer and then went back to
cleaning the carpet. Before long, a funny smell had me sniffing, just as I heard my parents returning. The tea towels had boiled dry.

They were horrified at the scene before them. And the china was still broken. They could hardly have been greeted by a more miserable scene if I’d been playing some kind of a practical
joke. The tea towels and the pot I was boiling them in were burned and blackened. A film of sudsy glue covered the cooker, and the carpet, saturated with soapy water, had a hole in the middle
where, in my determination, I had scraped right through. Needless to say, I was never put in charge of packing the china again.

Although it’s funny in retrospect, I think I was reaching that awkward stage in life when I had begun to feel more and more of an outsider as it really seemed that no one understood
me.

EIGHTEEN

‘Hurry up, Eva, for God’s sake!’ My father was drumming his fingers impatiently on the table.

‘Give the girl time to eat her breakfast,’ Mummy said. ‘And don’t wake up the twins!’

I hurriedly finished my toast and tea and then rushed around, brushing my hair and trying to find my shoes. Leaving the nice warm vardo at 6 a.m. and getting into a cold car was not something I
looked forward to of a morning. But, at ten years old, it had become my daily routine.

My father had told me that I would have to go to work with him, as he needed extra help, so I learned how to do developing and printing for his Happy Snaps business. Photos had to be ready
within one hour, so I was kept really busy with the many photographers he employed. And when there was not much business for the photographs, I was busily employed sorting out the bad fruit from
the many boxes of produce that were sold at the front of the shop.

As Christmas was coming up, he’d had yet another brilliant idea. He went and bought long balloons, which he showed me how to blow up and twist to make little dogs. To bring them to life, I
would paint on eyes, a nose and a mouth with radium shoe dye, using a little paintbrush. I would then tie them to a stick and they were sold from the fruit stall to the passing trade. They were
quite a novelty, but I had to make them all on my own and, believe me, after blowing up dozens of these I would find myself feeling more than a little woozy.

Mummy objected to the fact that I was away all day when she needed help with the twins and Nathan so, much to my relief, I was eventually allowed to stay at home. It was still hard work helping
to look after the other children, but at least it was work I was used to. In those days there were no such things as disposable nappies; we used terry towelling ones with a muslin lining which were
fastened at the front with a large safety pin. These all had to be washed in a dolly tub, which was a corrugated bin in the shape of a barrel. Soap flakes and hot water were added to the nappies
(after they’d been emptied, of course!) and we would use a dolly peg, which was like a cow’s udder on a stand with handles, which we would place in the water and twist so as to move the
laundry around in a manner similar to that of a washing machine. I found it much easier to sing while I was doing this, so that it was done with a rhythm.

Just up the road from where we were was a big Co-op where I would be sent to do the shopping. All regular shoppers were given a serial number, so they got their dividends, and to this day I
remember our number – 637003. For £5, I would come back with about six bags of shopping. I would take the twins’ pram, as I was too little to carry everything on my own, and I
would ferry the shopping home in it.

One day, Mummy and I were out shopping with the pram and decided to call into my father’s shop as we needed some fruit and vegetables. As we went in, Daddy was standing very close to a
quite attractive young woman, their heads together as they talked. He saw us and immediately came forward.

‘Laura!’ he said heartily. ‘And Eva! My two favourite girls. What can I get you?’

Even as a child, I picked up on the fact that he seemed flustered and anxious for us to go. As he hurriedly shoved carrots and potatoes into a bag, the woman left the shop and Daddy immediately
seemed to relax.

It happened a few times after that. We’d call in and there’d be another woman present, chatting and laughing with my father. You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to realise he
wanted us both out of the way. I was too young to fully understand what was going on but, of course, Mummy did. I think by now she didn’t really care.

Then, one midsummer’s day in 1950, my father returned from work and announced that we would be moving. Both Mummy and I could have jumped for joy, immediately thinking that we would be
going to join the rest of the family. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the case.

‘We’re going to Bedworth,’ he announced.

It turned out that in Bedworth, a mining town about five miles from Coventry, was a field owned by a Mr Malcolm. He allowed fairground families to stay there and many would pull in during the
winter, so they could repaint their stalls and caravans. People who had rides would have to erect them to repaint them, and so it made sense to open up at weekends. And although they didn’t
take a lot of money, it was better than nothing.

Although going to Bedworth was not what we would have picked if we’d been given a choice, it couldn’t be any worse than where we were. As we pulled in, I remember groaning when I saw
the tap where the travelling people would get their water, as I knew I would be the one who would have to lug our two chromium-plated water cans up the hill every day.