A School and a Big City
I was five and Frankie was six, but my mother managed to wangle us both into Hawkswood Primary School as twins.
On our first morning our mother tucked my shirt in at the back, while simultaneously ripping a brush through Frankie’s hair.
‘Now, for God’s sake, don’t go telling them what you are.’
‘Why?’ squeaked Frankie, holding on to her scalp for dear life.
‘Cos they will kick you out on your arses. Now, Mikey, how old are you?’
I stood tall and replied as if she was a drill sergeant.
‘I’m six years old and share a birthday with Frankie.’
‘That’s right, baby.’ She leaned towards me, pinched my cheeks and gave me a congratulatory kiss for remembering. Her rare display of physical affection took me by surprise and I blushed with pleasure. ‘If anybody asks, that’s all you have to tell them, all right?’
Frankie jumped down from the stool and grabbed our lunch boxes.
‘All right,’ we chorused.
Our mother gave a proud smile, looking us up and down.
‘Come on then, you herbs, I don’t want to make you late on the first day.’
Like all Gypsy children before us, we had been brought up not to trust Gorgias. And more than anything else, Gypsies don’t trust Gorgia schooling. Not just because they believe they don’t need a formal education to get by, but because they fear their children will be influenced by the Gorgias, learning too much of their lifestyle and changing them as a people for ever. The Gypsy race is an old-fashioned and, sadly, a very bitter one. They live, breathe, sleep, grieve, love and care for only their own people. They don’t like or trust the ways of others and don’t have contact or friendships with other races, afraid that one day they will be forced to turn their backs on their once proud way of life and become like any other.
The roots of this go back to the many years of persecution and hatred the Gypsies have suffered, all over the world. They have rarely been liked or tolerated anywhere. Five hundred years ago it was commonplace to see a Gypsy staked upon London Bridge and during every religious war Gypsies were first in the firing line, cast as heathens and godless magicians. In the Second World War many were left as sitting ducks, banging on farmers’ doors for sanctuary during Hitler’s raids, thrown into prisons and concentration camps to be tortured and killed.
Given this history, Gypsies believe, perhaps understandably, that they have only managed to survive by remaining insular and rejecting the rest of the world. And so, sadly, the prejudices on both sides have only deepened. It is tragic, both for the Gypsies who distrust and hate, and for the other races that never get to see the more human, generous, side of the Romanies.
None of the other Gypsy children in our area went
to school. For the most part, Gypsies were left alone by education officials reluctant to set foot in the local camps. But we lived in a bungalow, where the piles of tarmac, the scrap and my father’s bright orange cargo lorry parked on the drive were already aggravating the neighbours. We were bound to be reported, sooner or later.
But my mother wanted us to go. Our father and our grandparents on both sides were unable to read and write. Mum could write a bit, but only using phonetic spelling and in capital letters. She wanted more for us, welcoming the idea of us learning to read and write, while at the same time keeping us out of our father’s firing line.
We lasted two weeks.
Within two days, Frankie had brought home the contents of our teacher’s stationery drawer and I had stolen a goldfish. I’d reached into the head teacher’s, Mrs Trout’s, private tank during lunch break, and shoved the little stowaway into my pocket. It died during story time about a half hour or so later and, feeling guilty about being a murderer, I confessed.
A bemused Mrs Trout ordered that from now on, every single lunchtime, she would come and sit between us until we had finished our food, to ensure that we would never be able to repeat such behaviour again. From then on we sat either side of her with our dinner trays, staring wide-eyed as she tucked into her salad bowl with her loose-fitting dentures threatening to pop out of her mouth.
Then came the questions.
‘So, how old are you then, Mikey?’
I let out a very small scream. ‘I’m six years old and share a birthday with Frankie!’
‘Really? That’s very interesting.’
‘Why?’ snapped Frankie.
‘Because, my dear, you are so much bigger than your brother is.’
The three of us sat, quietly chewing on our food. I felt a bead of sweat tumble from my forehead.
‘I’ll need to speak to your mummy after school. Do you think she will be available?’
‘Nope,’ replied Frankie, sucking on a buttered roll.
‘And why not?’
Frankie lifted her head, with a pool of butter spreading across her cheeks.
‘Because she thinks you’re a cunt.’
Mrs Trout, cheeks scarlet, lifted her tray and moved stiffly to another table. Frankie giggled to herself, making dolphin noises as she slurped her soup.
Later that week a woman who called herself Aunt Gertie appeared in the playground and began paying me and Frankie daily visits. The teachers approached one day and asked us if she was a relative. Although we’d never seen her before, we nodded enthusiastically. We were brought up to call any adults aunt or uncle; it was considered good manners.
Tired of our tendency to stuff anything we could lay our hands on into our pockets, Mrs Trout and her staff were only too happy to have someone there to keep us out of trouble.
We liked Aunt Gertie; she taught us some ripe swear words and never once arrived without some smuggled toys and sweets. So when, one dinner hour, she suggested we go for a walk, we thought it was a great idea.
We were about a mile away when two police cars pulled onto the pavement next to us. Frankie and I were put into one of them while Aunt Gertie was slammed against a wall and arrested for child abduction.
With all the faceless relatives we already had, it was hard for us to keep track of who was or was not part of our family. But Aunt Gertie, we discovered, was definitely not. She was, in fact, just a local nutter who had taken a liking to us.
After that brief foray into school, we found ourselves back at home again, forbidden to leave the house, while Mother dealt with the trauma the school had put her and her kids through. Frankie and I didn’t really mind, we were just happy not to have to wake up so early. We went back to amusing ourselves at home once more.
Thrown on our own resources, with only one another to play with, Frankie and I turned to our toys for company. They became our best friends, taking on personalities of their own. For Frankie it was Jesus, the Barbies and the brand-new Cabbage Patch dolls she continued to receive courtesy of Old Noah. For me, apart from my Action Man tank, which I was using as a urinal, there was a glow in the dark Dracula doll, a crocodile oven mitt I named Grandma Buggins, and, of course, my He-Man figures. My favourite toy of all was He-Man’s arch nemesis, Skeletor, the muscle-bound, blue-skinned villain with a skeleton’s face and a goat’s head on a stick as his choice weapon. I loved him so much, that the only reason I wanted the others was so that he could beat them up or bury them alive in the garden. I never left the house or went on a trip without smuggling him in with me somewhere.
Most days Barbie and her friends invited He-Man and his pals to dinner. I’d even raid Frankie’s dolls’ clothes box to dress them formally for the occasion. The problem was they had such muscle-bound torsos that nothing fitted, so I improvised by cutting three holes in the end of each of my socks to make evening gowns for them.
But our favourite game together was still the forbidden Aunt Sadly. I would wear one of Frankie’s nightdresses and her now disused navy school tights, with small stones shoved down the legs to look like varicose veins, just like Mrs Trout’s. Then, after Frankie had taught me how to behave like a lady, I would stay in the shop, while my ‘niece’ went off on a shopping spree around the house.
Early one morning we were at this game while our parents were still asleep. Frankie was putting on my make-up in the bathroom, when we heard stirring from the main bedroom. Our father was awake and was making his way through the house to the bathroom. I fell backwards into Frankie, wriggling my shoulder blades and pointing towards the knot where the nightdress was tied on at the back of my neck. ‘Untie it, quick,’ I whispered.
Frankie’s fingers fumbled and tugged, pulling it tighter in her panic, and half-strangling me. I rammed my face into a dry bath towel and scraped frantically at my make-up.
‘What the fuck, are you doing in there?’
Frankie pushed out a grunting sound, ‘Can you wait a minute, Dad, I’m on the toilet.’
‘I know you’re both in there. Open the door – now.’
Reluctantly Frankie unlocked the door.
He barged in to find us both in glamorous dress and full make-up, only mine was now smeared all over my face.
Our father’s violent outbursts were becoming more frequent and more vicious, not just when he was training me, but whenever the monster within took him over. And this was one of those times.
I was pulled into the beating room, the new and well-deserved name for my bedroom. And after the thrashing I got that day we had to kill off Aunt Sadly; her presence around the house was far too risky. We gave her a funeral, and laid her to rest out in the garden along with the rest of the bodies. We both missed her.
I envied my sister. She was untouchable because she was a girl. I adored her, worshipped her and hated her all at the same time. She was never at the end of a punch, a belt, or a boot, never hated, humiliated or jeered at. She was my father’s daughter, more like him than I could ever be, and safe, because of her sex.
Old Granddad Noah was looming over my father like a spectre, reminding him constantly of his lack of worth compared to Tory and now Tory’s strapping sons. And I just rubbed salt in the wound. Day by day my father’s revulsion for me grew and my body became a mass of bruises, new layered on top of the old.
Still, in some respects the training worked. In time I learned to withstand most of his punches without crying out or flinching. But rather than being pleased with me, he saw this as a fresh challenge. If I didn’t scream with pain, he wouldn’t be satisfied. He searched for ways to ‘test’ me, with belts, sticks, boot-heels and even Barbie dolls, whipped across my legs, leaving marks that made the blood rise from my skin. In truth, my father wasn’t testing me, or training me, he was punishing me for failing
him. I wasn’t the son he dreamed of, and he was never going to forgive me for that.
By the time I was six years old I wasn’t even allowed to be seen in his presence or mutter a word, unless he addressed me first. I was a silent ghost of a child, terrified of provoking his rage, just by existing.
When I was six and a half, our mother fell ill and was taken to hospital. Granny Bettie was sent to look after us until she came home, reassuring us that she would be fine and that she was bringing back a surprise, and a week or so later, she did; a new baby brother for us. We had no idea where babies came from, and it was not for us to ask, unless we wanted a clip around the ear. We could only assume that they had bought baby Henry-Joe from the hospital, the same way Frankie would buy one from (the late) Aunt Sadly’s shop.
Even as a newborn, it was apparent that Henry-Joe shared our mother’s looks. He was white-skinned and red-haired with a head the shape of a perfect little apple. Nothing like my father’s breed at all.
‘He’s one of us, Frank, you can’t deny it’, croaked my granny Bettie on his arrival.
And he couldn’t. My mother’s grief for her own father was transformed into love for a child she was determined my father and his awful family would stay away from. And Henry-Joe’s appearance, attributes and constant surveillance from my mother’s side saved him. My father accepted he was still without an heir.
As for Frankie and I, we regarded the new arrival with a mixture of awe, affection and horror. We had never heard
a baby cry so much. He didn’t stop, especially at night, when one of our parents would have to get into the car and drive him around, just to get him back off to sleep.
I found Henry-Joe fascinating and was unable to take my eyes off him when our mother held him on her lap. Frankie, feeling a little jealous, chose to resurrect old Jesus from under her bed. His ageing vibrations and squawks sounded more and more like a cement mixer, but he caused Frankie a lot less grief than Henry-Joe did our parents. Frankie and I would stuff our ears with socks before we went to sleep, just to avoid his midnight screams.
Late one night, a few weeks after Henry-Joe’s birth, our father’s bellow vibrated down the hallway. ‘Come on, wake up! We’re going to London to see the lights.’ We rarely ever left our house, but every now and then our father did things like this – taking us all off at midnight, on a whim.
I jumped out of bed and scuttled into the lounge. My mother was wrestling with a wailing Henry-Joe and a nappy, while applying a slick of eyeliner at the same time.