Gypsy Boy (22 page)
Authors: Mikey Walsh
Henry-Joe smiled. ‘Look after yourself.’ He sounded like a little man already.
‘We’ll be good,’ said Jimmy.
We waved goodbye as I ran as fast as I could, up the road to where Caleb was waiting for me by the phone box. I dragged my bag from the hedge, threw it into the back of the car and jumped in as Caleb revved up and sped away.
I wiped the tears from my eyes. The road ahead was straight and clear. The sun had come out.
Today
I open my eyes and rub the sleep from them. A police siren screeches by as barking dogs skim through the grass in the park below my window. For a second I don’t remember what day it is.
Today is my wedding day.
Across the room a neatly pressed suit hangs from a brass chandelier. And on the floor beneath it sits a pair of red-sequinned Converse sneakers. My ruby slippers.
I throw back the covers, get out of bed and walk three steps to the armchair. I sit and light a cigarette.
It is the morning after a storm. I sat up until three to listen to it, smoking and envying every Gypsy who still gets to hear the force of the rain as it dances across a trailer roof.
I stub out the cigarette and head for the shower. As I towel myself down, the phone rings. It is Belle, my best pal, and glamorous driver of the wedding car.
‘Darling, you’re getting married! How do you feel?’
I peer into the mirror. There is a red slash across my nose. I have injured myself in my sleep again.
‘I look terrible.’
‘Oh do fuck off, dear, you’re gorgeous.’
‘There’s a cut on my nose. Do you have any make-up?’
I can hear her rummaging through her stacked bag.
‘Mascara, foundation, lipstick …’
‘Some good cover-up?’
‘Got it. Don’t you worry, today you are the beautiful groom, and I am Estée Lauder.’
She hangs up and I start to get ready.
I put on my candy-striped shirt, silver-blue suit and, lastly, the ruby slippers. They pinch my ankles, but I love them. They take me back to being four years old, prancing about the trailer in my aunt Minnie’s red high-heels.
I am ready, but Belle won’t be here for another half hour. I sit back in the armchair, and light another cigarette.
It is thirteen years since I climbed into Caleb’s car and fled from my family and my people. It has been a long, tough journey, with twists and turns I could never have imagined.
I always believed that my future would be with Caleb, but I was wrong.
The day we escaped, he drove me to the home that he had found for us both in Manchester. It was the first night we had ever spent together. As I watched him sleep, I wanted so much to believe that everything would turn out right. But I knew better. Caleb loved me enough to steal me from my people, risk everything to have me with him and teach me how to live in his world. But I knew my people, and I knew what my father could be capable of if someone roused his anger. Caleb should have known better than to get caught up in a world of which he knew nothing. But I should have told him more about it. I was scared.
We were driving by Caleb’s work when his phone rang, the next morning. Within twenty-four hours my father, along with several others, had tracked down Caleb’s mother
in Newark, burst into her house and torn it apart searching for me. My father had threatened her, warning her that he was going to find her son and me, and that he would be back every day until I was handed over.
in Newark, burst into her house and torn it apart searching for me. My father had threatened her, warning her that he was going to find her son and me, and that he would be back every day until I was handed over.
No sooner had he left when she rang Caleb to warn him. She sounded so terrified as she cried down the receiver, begging him to do what my father said. But Caleb denied all knowledge of where I was, even to her.
From that moment on the phone didn’t stop ringing. Like invaders, my father was hunting down every person that Caleb knew. Friends, family and people from his old job began to call, asking questions, warning him, and repeating what my father had said: ‘That Gypsy boy’s dad’s just been in here’, ‘Do you know where Mikey Walsh is?’, ‘We know he’s with you Caleb’, ‘Mikey’s father is offering £100, just for your phone number’. Every call brought another fearful voice through the speaker in Caleb’s car. My father was bribing, threatening and beating information out each and every one of them. Frightened people talked, and it wasn’t long before my father came after us. Then someone actually took my father’s money. He got a hold of Caleb’s phone number.
To hear that man’s voice at the other end of the phone terrified me. I had deluded myself into thinking that I would never hear that rumble of a voice ever again, and now he was calling every minute, demanding to know of Caleb’s whereabouts and making threats toward his family to get him to agree to meet him. Caleb refused to tell him, and so the hunting continued, and it wasn’t long before my father got the information he needed to find us.
We were sat in the car when I got the most sickening
feeling in my stomach. My body filled with fear and I began to lower myself down in the passenger seat. I could feel him. Seconds later, my father’s van was coming towards us on the opposite side of the road.
feeling in my stomach. My body filled with fear and I began to lower myself down in the passenger seat. I could feel him. Seconds later, my father’s van was coming towards us on the opposite side of the road.
I quickly ducked out of sight, but seeing Caleb, my father put up a chase. Caleb swore and shouted with fear as his little car careered down the narrow roads, managing to lose my father briefly, so that I could jump from the car and hide. I ran into in a pub, locking myself in a toilet cubicle, and stayed there until Caleb came back for me.
When he returned he was bloody and battered. He didn’t need to tell me that my father had caught up with him. He left me at the pub while he went to his work to warn them not to answer any questions from anyone who came looking for him. And on his way there, the phone rang again. It was Henry-Joe.
He had stolen the phone from my father’s coat pocket after lights out and in a whisper from his hiding place, Henry-Joe asked Caleb to send me home. Of course Caleb said nothing and assured Henry-Joe that I was not with him and he comforted my brother as he quietly cried into the receiver. Then Henry-Joe gave Caleb a warning that made his blood run cold: my father had put a contract out on me. He had spread the word among the travellers that I had stolen a valuable ring from him and offered a reward of ten thousand pounds to anyone who could bring this fictitious piece of jewellery back to him and break my legs, so that I could never run again.
As Caleb walked into the lobby, my mother was waiting for him. She had slipped out in secret to come and see him. My mother knew Caleb would not admit that he was hiding
me, but told him, that if he did know where I was, we had to get away before they came for me.
me, but told him, that if he did know where I was, we had to get away before they came for me.
Fearing for our safety, Caleb hid me and all my belongings in the boot of his car. In the middle of the night, a gang of travellers came for me and I listened from the boot as Caleb was beaten again, to force him to talk. For three more weeks I lived in his car boot and hid in churches, pubs and supermarkets for hours on end, while Caleb, beaten up over and over again, still refused to betray me.
It couldn’t go on. One day after he had finished work, he picked me up from the pub he had left me in and drove me to Leeds, using a friend’s car, so that we wouldn’t be followed. He gave me fifty pounds and told me to find a bed and breakfast and look for a job. He was leaving his new job to go back to Newark, in an attempt to convince the Gypsies that he wasn’t with me.
He took the number from a phone box next to the station, giving me the date and time when he would call, in one month’s time.
I couldn’t blame him for doing it. But at fifteen, I was standing on a street corner, with a bag and barely enough money to survive a few days. I was frightened, alone, and didn’t know whether he would really come back.
I walked the streets, looking for a cheap place to stay, being turned away from door after door. Then a landlady took pity on me and took my fifty for one week’s rent. All I had left was a few pence, which I used to buy a packet of instant mash. Three days into my first week I was so hungry that I passed out in the shower.
After that, I swallowed my pride, went out into the streets, and begged.
One day, I walked into a bar and was offered a cleaning job by a kind manageress. She even helped me to fill out the application form, since I could barely read or write.
Before I could be paid, I had to have a bank account. Plucking up my courage, I walked into a high street bank, sat down in front of the adviser and told her my whole story. She did something extraordinary, letting me use her address and helping me with the forms so that I could open an account.
Somehow I survived for two more weeks until my first pay cheque came in. After that, all I had left to do was wait for Caleb’s call.
He called at exactly the time he had promised. I was tearful with relief to just hear his voice, and within days, he was coming up to see me again.
But Caleb’s perception on what we had was changed forever. The pressure of the travellers, still calling on him daily, and my father’s threats hanging over him and his family, were taking their toll. He couldn’t take it any longer. Every time he came to visit, there was a new injury and a new threat. Endless phone calls from strangers threatening to break Caleb’s legs made him change his phone and not tell anyone the number. Not even his own family. Caleb was falling into a deeply paranoid state that began to distort his feelings for me. Not knowing his number did not stop his torture. Gypsies were still coming to his house and following him to and from his work. My father had set the price and now all he had to do was sit back, while those in need of the money would do the searching for him.
Finally he cracked, turning on me, and I had to say goodbye.
At sixteen years old, I was alone in the Gorgia world. I
had lost Caleb, and could not go back to my home even if I had wanted to.
had lost Caleb, and could not go back to my home even if I had wanted to.
There was no turning back.
I carried on with my job in Leeds for a few months. Once a month I would write a letter to my mother, taking a train to a different place each time to post it, so that I couldn’t be traced. Sometimes I would make a day of it, finding a nice café or pub in a strange town to sit and write and choosing the perfect place to post it.
My letters were all written phonetically, and all in capitals. I knew my mother would be able to read them, because I wrote just the way she always had done. And I posted the letters to her at Granny Bettie’s bungalow.
After saving enough money, I moved to Liverpool and took a job in a gay bar. I found new friends, and met Leigh. We became the best of friends and moved in together.
In between shifts, I began to educate myself. I read many books and learned new words every day, lapping up a world I had been denied as a child.
I saw plays and films and discovered the world of the theatre. And with Leigh’s help I got a place on a theatre education course. Two years later I auditioned for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. When I heard that I had got in, and would be moving south in a few months time, I was astonished, thrilled, and proud.
I was finally making a life for myself.
But I missed my mother. I couldn’t go through a day without thinking of her, my sisters and the boys.
Five years after we had last met, I wrote to my mother, telling her the truth about my sexuality and my lifestyle. I told her I would understand if she never wanted to see
me again, but that I hoped she would come and meet me. I gave two dates, two locations and two times, in case she couldn’t make the first. I knew there was always a risk that my father might find out and follow her. But my longing to see her was bigger than my fear.
me again, but that I hoped she would come and meet me. I gave two dates, two locations and two times, in case she couldn’t make the first. I knew there was always a risk that my father might find out and follow her. But my longing to see her was bigger than my fear.
The first location I’d given was at a city centre hotel. I waited for thirty minutes on the front steps, with no sign of her. My heart broke, as I convinced myself that I would have to go on without ever having her back in my life. Then, there was the hoot of a car horn.
I looked up and saw her, sitting in a small white van, beside the curb. As our eyes met, we both burst into tears. I jumped from the steps, pulled open the van door and threw my arms around her.
‘I love you, my Mikey,’ she sobbed. ‘I love you. I knew, I always knew, you know, and I didn’t care. You were special, you were my little boy.’
I was shocked. She knew? I felt I’d just heard that I’d had the power to go back to Kansas all along.
She was still the wonderful, celestial woman I remembered. The smell of ground coffee and lipstick filled my senses as I breathed her in.
She turned to the back seat of the van, and picked up a big bundle of letters – hers to me, for the day when she would be finally able to give them to me. All, like mine, written phonetically, and in capital letters. There were Christmas cards, birthday cards and the presents she had bought and kept hidden under her bed over the past five years. She had never given up hoping.
I took her for lunch, and then to my flat, where she met Leigh. The three of us laughed and reminisced for several
hours, until she had to leave, to get back home before my father returned from work.
hours, until she had to leave, to get back home before my father returned from work.
She told me that Frankie had confessed her marriage to Wisdom once she became pregnant. She had moved onto a convoy with his family. When she was eight months pregnant, she stole twenty pence from Wisdom’s pocket and ran away as he slept. She called our mother, who came to collect her and took her home. A month later Frankie gave birth to a baby boy. She called him Frank.
At just eighteen Frankie was divorced and condemned to live with her parents, bringing up her son, alone. According to Gypsy custom, no man would ever look at her again.
When we parted, my mother said she was going to go home and tell my father she was in touch with me again and that he had better accept it. And she said she would come again and bring Frankie, Henry-Joe, Jimmy and Minnie.
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