In his second prize-winning tale, Adrian White’s protagonist remembers a remarkable summer spent in the company of a family of New Age travellers
They were New Age travellers before the phrase even existed. Or what might now have been called ‘economic migrants’. To me though, as a ten year-old boy back in 1973, anybody who lived in a caravan was a gypsy. Their camp was set up by the side of our football pitch; three caravans by the footpath that ran along the length of The Green. They’d been there for the previous few Saturdays and I thought it a strange place for them to set up camp. It made more sense to be on the edge of town, closer to the site of the new steel plant where – presumably – there was work to be had for those that wanted it. We all felt the same way about the camp and we took our cue from our parents, who’d say things like,
“I see that gypsy camp is still on The Green.”
They managed to convey their disapproval without actually expressing it.
Everything changed, though, when I learnt that Rory lived in one of the caravans.
Rory had been my new best friend since he started school at the beginning of the summer term. His hair was dyed bright orange and cut to look like Ziggy Stardust. Anybody else but Rory would have had their hairstyle beaten out of them in the playground – this was the usual response to anything that little bit different. But there was something about Rory that warned off the bullies, and this was one of the reasons I was so pleased to have him as my friend. He was from Ireland, though he was born in New York and his ‘real da’ still lived there. His mum had met his ‘new da’ in Ireland. I’d never come across the concept of having more than one dad before. Rory told me they were here because this new dad – who was a qualified electrician and had worked in the steel plants of Pittsburgh – was looking for work at the plant. I didn’t know exactly where Pittsburgh was, but I agreed to ask my own dad if he knew of anything going.
My grandma loved Rory – mainly, I think, because she could talk to him about Ireland – and it was through her interest that I learnt most of the things I knew about him. When I saw them together, Rory’s strangeness and otherworldliness seemed to disappear. New York, for example, or travelling in an aeroplane – these were things I could barely imagine at the time. And when Rory casually mentioned the many places he’d been to in Ireland, I recognised them all as part of Grandma’s distant past. I knew my family were from Ireland, as I knew that more or less all my friends’ families were from Ireland. Father Lennon, our parish priest, was from Ireland; all the nuns were from Ireland; and I presumed all our teachers were from Ireland too, though I’m not too sure now about Mr Pederson – I think he may have been from somewhere in Scandinavia. But hearing Grandma talk about these things made them different somehow, and I wondered for the first time how we’d all come to live in this one place. The idea of all these people, thousands of families, uprooting to live in a different country – in Scunthorpe, even – and it had never occurred to me to ask why. This was where we lived and I just accepted that as a given fact.
When I first called for Rory, I stood a safe distance away from the three dogs that guarded the caravans. The dogs were tied to stakes driven deep into the ground, but I wasn’t taking any chances. There were dried splatters of mud on each caravan, thrown by daring boys when the camp appeared to be deserted. Rory must have seen me waiting, because he came out and stood by the dogs.
“They won’t bite,” he said.
He bent to pet one of the dogs and as this dog jumped up at Rory I jumped back.
“Sit!” commanded Rory, and the dog sat. The other two dogs started barking and Rory told them to be quiet. If I had any sense or any awareness at all, I’d have noticed the dogs wagging their tails, but I didn’t.
“Would you like to pet them?” Rory asked, trying to put me at my ease. There wasn’t a hope in hell of that happening, but I appreciated the gesture.
I relaxed as we walked away from the caravans and across to the park.
“Are there any other kids in the camp?” I asked.
“You mean kids our age? No, but there are three babies; one of them’s my sister.”
The camp seemed too quiet for babies to be inside, but I didn’t know what it was like to have a baby sister – or a baby anything, for that matter.
“What do you do all day?”
“Just play.”
“With your sister?”
“No, my sister’s with my ma. I’m there on my own.”
Had he been watching us play football these past few weeks? Building up the nerve to ask us for a game?
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“Jessica.”
“And where’s your mum – your ma?”
“Out looking for a job.”
“With Jessica?”
“Looking for money, then.”
“You mean begging?” I was relentless.
“It’s easier if you have a baby,” he said.
I met Rory’s mum – Alice – on the day we went picking peas. Rory had told me there was good money to be made, that the previous Saturday he’d made thirty pence. This was three times the amount of my weekly pocket money, and more than I ever got for serving Mass at weddings and funerals.
“It’s hard work, though,” he said.
I had to be at Rory’s caravan for six in the morning, so I asked Dad to wake me before he went to work. I ate some cereal and packed a sandwich and a drink in the duffel bag I used for football. I had to take out my boots and empty out the clumps of dried mud and grass into the sink. I made it to the caravan on time, but first I had to get past those dogs.
“Give me your bike,” said Rory. He took my pushbike and leant it against his caravan. He ordered all three dogs to sit and be quiet. “Now, hold out your hand in front of you – like this.” Rory hung his arm limply, with the back of his hand held out to the dog closest to us. “He just wants to smell you,” he said. “Once he knows you, you’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t a dog person. We never had pets at home. To me they were just a threat, out to do me harm, but I could see this dog was happy to see me and I was fairly confident that Rory now had it under control. The dog inched forward to sniff the back of my hand.
“Now, move your hand along the side of his mouth and stroke him behind the ears.”
It was the mouth that I was worried about – or at least the teeth inside – but I found myself stroking the dog, bringing my other hand round to the other ear, and even bending down to say hello. Of course, given this encouragement, the dog jumped up, to rest his paws on my chest, and the other dogs started barking again.
“Tell him to sit,” said Rory.
“Sit,” I tried, and the dog sat.
“They’re just excited. You’d best say hello to the other two.”
“What are their names?”
“This one’s Jack, and that’s Suzie and Bob. Suzie’s Bob’s mum.”
“And is Jack the dad?”
“No, Jack wasn’t around before Bob was born.”
“Do they know their names?”
“Sure – try them.”
I did, and each dog responded by lifting an ear and wagging their tail.
“Are you guys coming inside?”
I looked up and saw a young woman, standing by the open door of the caravan.
“Hi, I’m Alice,” she said, in an American accent. Now I’m older, I know it to have been a New York accent – or, more specifically, a Brooklyn accent – but at the time all I heard was America. “So this is the famous Bernard, is it?”
I didn’t know if she was asking me a direct question, or talking to Rory whilst looking at me, so I just stood there and said nothing. She was wearing a short dress and holding a baby on her hip. I thought she must be a woman from one of the other caravans, that there might be more Americans here. It certainly didn’t occur to me that this might be Rory’s mother.
“Come on inside,” she said, and held the door open for Rory, then me to duck beneath her arms and into the caravan. My face felt hot as I walked past her.
I don’t know what I’d expected – maybe some gypsy gold or jewels – but inside it was small and pretty mundane. It was simply a caravan, cramped and confined, with a box of Shreddies and milk and dirty bowls on the lean-to table. It was crowded in there too, because there were two men sat drinking tea at the table. They looked identical; either that or I hadn’t looked properly. They had dark skin – not black, because I didn’t see my first black man until later that year – and they were kind of wiry. They looked tough, and I figured that Rory had picked up some of this same toughness. I wandered if this might not be Rory’s caravan after all, though I was pretty sure this was the one he always appeared from. Was one of these guys his dad? Were they both his dad? Had his real dad come from America, and might there be trouble? Or did Rory live in some sort of hippy commune? I’d heard about these, with couples swapping partners and practicing free love.
I was introduced to the men, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at them. They stood up and one of them bent down to kiss Alice; he kissed the baby too and made to ruffle his hand through Rory’s hair. Rory dodged out of the way and the man laughed, like he knew it was off limits to touch the Ziggy haircut but enjoyed trying anyway.
“We’d best get going,” he said.
The baby – Rory’s sister, Jessica, I guessed – had started to make a fuss and wriggle around on Alice’s hip. I’d never really seen a baby up close before; she didn’t look very happy, and I could see she was about to cry. Alice kind of bobbed her up and down, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. Rory picked up the dirty dishes and moved them over to the tiny sink area.
I asked Alice if she wanted anything doing. She laughed and called me a sweetie, the first time I’d ever heard that expression.
“No,” she said, “I just need to change the baby and put on some warm clothes before we go.”
“Are you Rory’s mum?” I asked.
“Why yes, sweetie – who did you think I might be?”
Alice opened a cupboard above the sink and put away the cereal box. I wanted to help but the best I could do was to stay out the way. I felt awkward, but Rory and Alice seemed well used to the restricted space. Rory reached across me for a towel and spread it out across the table. Alice gently lowered Jessica on to the towel.
“Come on,” said Rory. “You don’t want to see this.”
It wasn’t the baby-changing I was looking at; I could see to the tops of Alice’s legs from the way she was bent over the table.
Rory opened the door of the caravan and we stepped outside.
“Let’s get going,” he said. “We have to walk down to the bottom of Queensway.”
I asked Rory about leaving my pushbike unlocked and out in the open, but he said it would be safe.
“What do you think the dogs are for?” he asked.
We set off walking down the path that ran along the side of the road. When Alice caught up with us, she was wearing jeans and a big woolly sweater. My mum never wore jeans.
“Have you a jacket or something, sweetie,” Alice asked. “It gets cold on the back of that truck.”
I showed her the jacket I had in my bag.
There were five of us: Rory and myself, Alice, Rory’s dad and the man I figured now to be Rory’s dad’s brother – his uncle, I guess you’d call him. I didn’t know their names because I hadn’t listened when Alice first told me. Besides, I didn’t know whether I should call them by their first names. They all seemed closer in age to Rory and me than to my own parents. They were adults but it didn’t feel like I was in the company of grown-ups. I wondered what it was like for Rory to have such young parents, and if his real dad in America was as young as Alice seemed to be.
“Where’s Jessica?” I asked Rory.
“She’s staying with the others so my ma can come. They take turns to look after the babies.”
Again, this sounded pretty strange to me – hippy shit, as my brother Ritchie might have said – but I believe now that Alice came along that Saturday to look after us two boys. I had to ask Rory something else that had been bothering me.
“Do you not have a car?”
This wasn’t as tactless as it might seem – how else had they got the caravans here from Ireland?
“We had to sell it,” said Rory. “We needed the money.”
“So how will you ever move the caravans from the Green?”
Rory shrugged.
“When my da finds a job we can get a new car. Or we’ll live in a house so we won’t need the caravans any more.”
I saw Alice look at Rory and smile, like she was proud of him.
A crowd of about thirty people stood waiting in a lay-by, just before the roundabout at the end of Queensway. The new steel plant was only a few hundred yards away, and it was obviously already in use. There were no other kids waiting to get picked up for work. If Rory hadn’t done the week before, I’d have guessed what was happening here was for adults only. There was no one particular type of person at the lay-by, and I’m not sure I’d have noticed anyway – my mind just didn’t work in that way. It’s difficult to think of this scene today without relating it somehow to Mexican labour gangs in the southern United States but, again, race was something that hadn’t yet entered my consciousness. I knew nothing of such things at that age and for me it was just an adventure, a day out and a break from my normal Saturday routine. I presumed everyone was there for the same reason as me: to earn some extra pocket money.
We climbed up and piled into the back of the flat-bottomed truck that drove us out to the Lincolnshire countryside. I couldn’t tell you where we went. It took over an hour to get there and my bum was both numb and sore by the time we arrived. It was cold, as Alice had said it would be, and we sat wedged against each other for warmth and so we wouldn’t get thrown around by the truck. I was stiff when I jumped down and realised I had no idea what picking peas might entail. We lined up and were handed an empty sack. I stuck close to Rory and Alice and followed them out into the field.
“What do we do?” I asked Rory.
“I’ll show you.”
We were each allotted a row of plants and I made sure I was in the row next to Rory. He showed me how and where to pull the pods of peas off each plant, how to ignore the leaves and pull the stalks where they were attached to the stem of the plant. The pods went into the sack and Rory moved on to the next plant.
“When you’ve filled the sack, you take it to the van over there and they give you a ticket. At the end of the day, you get ten pence for every ticket.”
“So you picked three sacks last week?”
I thought I could do better than that but it was hard work – and boring too. After an hour or so, I still hadn’t filled one sack and I was falling way behind all the other pickers. Alice, who was in the next row along, picked from my row for a while and in this way I was able to at least catch up with Rory.
“It’s hard,” I said to Rory.
“You’ll get used to it.”
My technique did improve, but I was so tired I couldn’t increase my speed. My back hurt from bending over and after a while I copied Rory and just knelt down in the soil. At this rate, I’d be lucky to complete one row of peas by the end of the day. The field we were in seemed endless. Alice helped me out again, so at least the three of us were stragglers together. I looked up and I could see pickers who were way off into the distance, or carrying full sacks back to the van, or starting new rows with empty sacks. Rory’s dad was one of these and I saw he was using a knife to cut off the pods – three slashes of the knife and he had a plant stripped. He and his brother were by far the fastest of the pickers and I watched for a while, unashamedly impressed. Alice finished her first sack and took it back to the van. When she came back with her empty sack, she smiled and I got back to work. I noticed she was wearing Levi jeans and I added this to the many things I couldn’t figure out about Rory’s family: how could you have so little money and still afford a pair of Levi’s? But then I thought: maybe Levi’s were cheap in America?
I sat and rested with Rory once we’d each finished our first sack. We had to help each other take the sacks to the van and when we got back we were far behind Alice; some of the other pickers were level with us on their second or third row. I was about a quarter of my way along the row and I estimated that by the end of the day I might just about reach the end. If Rory had managed three sacks last week, I should at least be able to do the same. We weren’t so obviously behind everybody else now because pickers were starting fresh rows, and I began to view the completion of the row as my target for the day.
“I’m starving,” I said. Our bags were back on the truck.
“They break at one o’clock for dinner,” said Rory.
“What time do we finish for the day?”
“Four-thirty.”
I was beginning to think my one sandwich wasn’t going to be enough to see me through the day but, as it turned out, Alice had brought plenty of extra food. I was in awe of Rory’s dad as he sat quietly eating his dinner by the side of the truck. He seemed lost in thought and only occasionally looked up at Alice – and at Rory too sometimes. His brother was similarly quiet. I was so tired; my second sack wasn’t half-full and I couldn’t see how I was going to finish my one row of peas. We went back to work. In the end, as four-thirty approached, Alice doubled back and helped complete our rows. She emptied the peas she’d picked into our sacks and, so, Rory and I earned our three tickets and left with thirty pence each in our pockets.
We were all so tired on the way home that most of us just sat there with our eyes closed, giving in to the movement of the truck. Alice sat next to Rory’s dad; she held on to his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. He didn’t shut his eyes and he caught me looking at him, so I pretended to be asleep for the rest of the journey – or maybe I didn’t need to pretend? We were dropped off at the bottom of Queensway and all the pickers went their separate ways. We walked back to the caravans and when we got there Rory’s uncle went straight to his own caravan without saying a word. The dogs were naturally excited to see us but when they started barking Rory’s dad made to hit out at one of them.
“Da!” shouted Rory, and his dad stopped short of striking the dog. He lent his head back and looked up at the sky. I didn’t know what was happening.
“John,” said Alice.
He looked down at her and took in a deep breath. I think he was close to tears.
“One pound thirty,” he said.
“I know,” said Alice.
“One pound thirty,” he said again, louder this time.
“I know.”
I remember the amount because I knew it meant he’d picked thirteen sacks of peas in one day and I was so impressed.
“Come on,” said Alice. “Let’s get inside.”
I went home. Rory’s dad never found any work at the steel plant, and before the start of the summer holidays they’d moved on to another town.
More winning entries will be featured in next week’s issue
