The Wrath of Frankie
In the days that followed my father found a local quarry where we could get tar and grit, and an abundance of unsuspecting victims. He and I would leave the camp for the quarry every morning at 6 a.m. and only after shifting the majority of our cargo onto the drives of local pensioners for ridiculous amounts of money, or when it had become too dark to work, did we head back home.
I was glad, because every time I stepped back into Frankie’s trailer, I revisited her humiliating outburst. The other teenagers would be gathered there, but although I was included, things were not the same. Frankie’s bellow across the camp had truly stuck, and the brief moment in which I had felt what it was like to be a normal, popular kid was gone.
Frankie was too stubborn a girl to admit to anyone, including me, that she had been wrong, and it drove yet another wedge between us, because I found it hard to forgive her.
Alex was still friendly with me, but I suspected that it was because I was his excuse to come over to the trailer every evening. Frankie had made our trailer the new teenage girl hangout, and there was no better place for any red-blooded teenage Gypsy boy to be. Sitting with Frankie would be Romaine, now a giggly twelve-year-old, Kayla-Jayne,
the chatty girl who’d stuck her head in at the car window, and her buck-toothed sister Charlene.
The two boys who had been mocked that first evening – our second cousins Adam and Levoy – often hung around, and through their sheer persistence, were gradually accepted by Alex and became part of the group.
The two of them looked a bit like Laurel and Hardy. Adam was rake thin, with bow legs and the slight look of a chimpanzee around the ears. Levoy was double the size of little Adam, and the perfect comic relief. Although he had slightly more of a darker side to his personality than Adam it didn’t often surface until suddenly he’d hit you with a quip that would tear you apart. Levoy adored Adam, the two of them were inseparable, and secretly I shared his admiration; I thought Adam was amazing.
Once the girls had finished their daily cleaning chores, they would all come in and Frankie would pull the blinds. There they would sit for hours, smoking sneaky cigarettes, talking ‘women’s troubles’ and gossiping about boys. Or so we boys assumed. Sometimes the four of us – me, Alex, Adam and Levoy – tried to listen outside the window, to find out what they talked about. We were shocked, one evening, to hear one of the girls screaming in panic over having accidentally lost her virginity to a tampon. The girls all screeched and fussed as the four of us rolled about in the grass in stitches. I learned that night yet another secret rule of the dos and don’ts of the Gypsy girls’ code: they were not supposed to use tampons in case they broke the hymen before their wedding night.
All the girls fancied Alex, and when he arrived they would try to outdo themselves in giggling and flirting with him,
while squabbling openly about who he liked best. Listening from outside as I climbed the steps after work, I felt embarrassed for them. Worst of all was my sister, who put on a laugh that she clearly thought was adorable, but which in fact sounded painfully fake and very Wicked Witch of the West.
I grew up thinking that the girls had it easy. But as we all reached teenage, I began to see just how much pressure was on them. The dread that they might not marry before they were eighteen, and might have to join the ranks of the spinsters must have been awful. Once they hit twenty, their chance of ever having a family was virtually over. Only a rare few ever married after that age.
One evening I stepped into the trailer to find Frankie sitting on Alex’s lap, play-fighting over a carton of cigarettes. Seeing me, Alex peeled her off and leaped up, protesting that he’d been waiting for me. We both knew that, as her brother, I should be defending Frankie’s honour by punching Alex’s lights out. But I had no intention of doing that. All I wanted was to shower out of my hair the hideous pink dust from the grit I’d shovelled all day.
After packing a bag and prising Alex away from the girls, we set off for the local sports centre for a shower, as the one at the camp, having been smashed up three times by a phantom shower-head smasher, was now permanently out of action because the owner refused to fix it again. As he drove, Alex clearly felt the need to explain himself.
‘I wasn’t just up there to see her, I was waiting for you,’ he said.
‘That’s nice, Alex.’
‘Ain’t you upset or nothing?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t care about her having boys up the trailer to visit,’ I told him. ‘It’s not as if you were on your own with her. But if you think it’s wrong, don’t expect me to take your head off, just stop going up there. Frankie’s big and ugly enough to look after herself.’
Alex looked shocked. I felt he would have preferred a good smack.
When we reached the sports centre, the showers were packed. I hated having to go to public showers, and always kept shorts on, but Alex used the shower as an opportunity to celebrate the prowess of his rather smaller than average cock.
‘This may be a small one,’ he’d say, ‘but it’s had more sorts than any man in this room.’
No one but Alex could be vain enough to introduce his prick to a room full of people, and yet simultaneously try to start a fight about it at the same time.
I kept my mouth shut and kept on scrubbing. I wasn’t bailing him out of a fight until I was good and clean.
Thankfully he got away with it, and after our shower we headed back to the camp, to find the others still sitting around exactly as we’d left them. We spent the evening smoking and talking about who was getting married, who had a nice car, who was a whore and who was dead, while listening to Frankie’s Prince and Michael Jackson tape mix playing over and over again.
Glad as I was to be part of a group, it could be stifling at times. So when Alex asked me if I’d like to go to Brighton
with him to visit one of his girlfriends, I leaped at the chance.
For the first time my father was actually paying me for my labours. Until now he’d insisted it should be me paying him for the experience of working with him, but for a week now he had paid me ten pounds a day, so I had some money of my own.
Alex had been disappearing for weekends over the past few months, but we never knew where he went. I didn’t mind, because I spent that time with Adam and Levoy, and found them easy company. Unlike Alex, they seldom talked about girls, being far less confident or experienced than he was, and that suited me. I felt easy and relaxed with them. But I was flattered to be let in on Alex’s secret and to join in an adventure with him. We booked a travel inn close to the camp where his girl lived, and on Saturday morning we set off. On the long drive down, we talked about all the usual Gypsy boy things: girls, marriage and of course fighting – who had beaten who, where and how badly. I wasn’t really interested, but I knew the drill.
Eventually we lapsed into silence until, in a small voice, Alex said, ‘I was scared to death when you first arrived – I thought you were gonna smash my face in.’
‘You can’t have heard much about me then.’
‘Do you wanna know something else?’ he continued. ‘I’m scared that now you’re living in Newark, your cousins will come up to visit and beat the shit out of me and my brothers.’
I laughed. I knew Uncle Tory’s family would never set foot out of their own territory. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Alex.’
He paused, and then said, ‘Do you ever wish that you had been someone else?’
It was as if he had just read my mind, but I didn’t dare to say so. ‘No,’ I told him, lighting a cigarette.
But he was on a roll, and carried on. ‘I’ve had a few fights, but I ain’t worth two shits. I’ve hid in a cupboard more than I’ve put my hands up – you ever done that?’
‘I’m not allowed to, Alex.’
‘So you’ve had to fight every man that’s come to your door?’
‘Yes.’
‘Won any?’
‘No.’
‘Bet that hasn’t gone down well with your dad and Uncle Tory. My father would rather I hide away. He would do anything to keep out of trouble. Anyway, I’m a lover not a fighter.’
I felt exactly the same way. But I couldn’t let him see that. If I had learned anything, it was not to open up. I had far too much to hide to be able to be as honest with him as he was being with me. I envied him. I wished my father would have let me hide in a cupboard.
Once we got to Brighton we checked into our hotel and went off to meet his girl at a McDonalds in the town centre. When we arrived she was already there, a buxom, dark-haired girl who threw her arms around Alex as soon as she saw him. What Alex hadn’t told me was that she was bringing a friend for me, Jenny, a tiny girl of fourteen, covered in slap and wearing a pair of heels that seemed twice the size of her actual feet.
I was horrified, but there was nothing I could do but play along. We moved on to a bar and when Alex and I went up to get the drinks, he nudged me and asked me what I thought of her.
I told him she wasn’t my type. But Alex laughed. ‘Mikey, you’re only here for one night, you might as well try and get something out of this trip.’
He was right. If she liked me, it would be a heaven-sent opportunity to land myself a girlfriend.
Half an hour later Alex and his girl left, winking at us as they went. The other girl and I sat and struggled to make awkward small talk. After a bit she moved closer to me, running her fingers through her hair and pouting.
She sighed, ‘I wish I had a boyfriend.’
Like all Gypsy girls, she couldn’t ask a boy out, so she had to drop a hefty hint. I certainly couldn’t kiss her unless we were ‘going out’.
I turned to her and said it. ‘Will you go out with me?’
‘Yes,’ she cooed, and without pausing she pounced on me for my first-ever kiss.
I could taste her lipstick, mingled with Big Mac. I opened my eyes, looked into her heavily made-up face – and panicked. Having a girlfriend meant calling her every day, buying her presents, paying for everything, and if I couldn’t make her hate me enough to dump me after a few months, I’d have to propose.
For the rest of the afternoon we walked around Brighton, stopping to kiss every few minutes. Not because I wanted to, but because I could think of absolutely nothing to say to her. I was overjoyed when Alex rejoined us and we headed back to the hotel.
The next morning, on the way back to Newark, Alex spoke to his girl on the phone. ‘Mikey, Jenny told my girl to say you’re finished.’
A burden lifted from my shoulders. What a piece of luck to have met the one Gypsy girl in the country who just wanted a bit of fun. Or perhaps it was the fact that I showed no real interest in her, and kissed her as if I was sucking on a lemon.
A week later, Jay got into trouble with the police and the family had to leave. Alex said he would come back to visit. But he never did.
I missed him, but at least Frankie and I were getting on better. One evening the two of us dressed Henry-Joe and Jimmy up as hookers and sent them over to Aunt Minnie’s to borrow a cigarette. We watched through the window, both of us in stitches, as they waddled over in Frankie’s high heels. Henry-Joe and Jimmy had become as inseparable as Frankie and I had been at their age. Wherever Henry-Joe was, Jimmy was never more than a few feet behind. They only parted when Jimmy was training. He’d been jogging round the camp and weight-lifting since he was four, and at five my father began sparring with him. I noticed that my father’s approach had become less brutal, though he would never admit that he was too harsh with me. In fact, he used my failure to spur Jimmy on. I’d be cleaning the car outside and I’d hear my father taunting, ‘Harder, come on!’
Jimmy would grunt like a little pig as he punched my father’s palms.
‘Harder! Do you want to end up like “Nancy Anne” over there?’
After years of put-downs I had learned to ignore it. It was only when Adam and Levoy were around that it was humiliating. I’d explain that it was my father’s sense of humour. He was still ripping me apart and beating me in front of the dossas at work for being too weak, too slow and too stupid. And apart from Adam and Levoy, I couldn’t say my name to a man within ten years of my age without being asked to fight and getting my head kicked in, then being publicly beaten by my father for losing.
I hated myself. I was useless. I was a stupid coward who couldn’t fight to save his life; I couldn’t even handle a shovel at work.
But there was something even worse. I had a secret that would surely one day destroy me, and my family too.
Every night, I would climb into my bunk and lie awake, thinking about what I was going to do. How was I going to get out of this place before it was too late? It was only a matter of time before they would all see through me. The rumours were already spreading like poison, triggered by Frankie’s outburst. I needed to prove myself, but the only way would be to find a girl and marry her, and my six-hour fling with Jenny had convinced me I was never going to be able do that.