Twenty-Four

A New Life

Eventually, Alfie got married and moved into a place in the village. I met a lad called Terry Bendell soon after and we too were married. Me dad went mad. Terry was a gorgie mush from Bristol, so me dad vowed not to come to the wedding and refused to sign the marriage form. Without his signature I couldn’t be wed, as I wasn’t yet twenty-one, so I signed his name myself.

On the morning of me wedding, much to my delight, every jack man of my family turned up at Bristol registry office. It was a grand day. Me dad gave me new husband a lecture on how to look after me, which came as no surprise to me at all.

We ended up with a flat in the middle of Bristol and I found my new city life very hard. Soon I was expecting to go to bed – having my first child – and was over the moon when I discovered that we weren’t allowed to have children in the flat. It was my chance to change things. While my man was at work I rode around on the bus, looking for trailer parks. I found one site that I loved, but we had to buy a trailer to put on it. I was worried about breaking the news to Terry, as we didn’t have the money to buy a trailer, but I plucked up the courage to have it out with him.

“It sounds all right,” he told me, to my surprise. “I wouldn’t mind living on a caravan park, but where’s the money going to come from to buy a caravan?”

“Would you trust me to get it?” I asked him.

“I won’t borrow off your dad,” Terry told me sternly.

“Nor would I – but with your help I can get the money.”

He laughed. “How are you going to earn hundreds of pounds?”

“I want you to find out where the rubbish lorries tips the rubbish off to.”

“What on earth are you on about?” he asked, still laughing.

“I wants to know where the rubbish tips are round Bristol!” I cried and he dared not go against me. He found out for me and I began collecting some sack-bags together for scrap. One evening, he took me to the first tip. He thought I was off me head.

“I’ll show you how I can earn me living,” I smiled. “Follow me.” I taught my man what scrap metal was: brass, copper, aluminium, zinc and gun-metal. We collected it all, placing it in separate bags. We headed to the scrapyard for my first weigh-in of my very own and Terry got a shock when I weighed off my car boot full of metals. So much money for so little; he could not believe his luck.

We continued this most evenings, weighing off on a Saturday morning. We went further and further afield to find the different tips and take what we could from them. My son was born just before we moved on to the trailer park, into our very own trailer paid for out of the scrap we had collected. From then on my man took to my Romani way of life. He became a dab hand at wheeling and dealing and although he kept his day job we would work together in the evenings.

I was much happier on the trailer site, but I still found the days long and lonely. If Terry had had a bigger car I would’ve hitched up the trailer and travelled. One day I heard the women on the park telling each other about a group of Gypsies who had pulled in up the lanes. Well, off I went to look for them, thinking I could at least welcome them and while away some of the day. I pushed me pram up and down the lanes until I spotted the trailers unhitched at the side of the road.

Oh, this was right up my street. I had other Travellers to visit – and, not only that, but it turned out to be Arthur and Renee Benham, a lovely couple who we had picked hops and peas alongside many a time in the past. They agreed to come by the park in the mornings so I could come along with me baby to drop rag-bills, but it was not to last. Soon the police moved them on and I was once again on my own.

♦

Not long after this I found out that I was expecting to go to bed with a second child. I had my second son on the park and felt my family was complete. My days were now filled with caring for my boys.

One day, a man named Dr Fox called in to see me, full of the joys of spring.

“Maggie,” he said joyfully, “I have got some really good news for you and the other families on the park.”

“What’s that then, Doctor?” I asked him.

“A nice brand-new house! I’ve got you a brand-new house to move into.”

“What is you talking about?” I asked, obviously upset. I didn’t want no house! What was this crazy mush telling me?

“Aren’t you pleased?” he asked, not understanding. “A nice new house.”

“I ain’t going in no house,” I warned him.

“Oh but you are! They’re not finished yet, but I’ve put your name forward for one and it’s yours. I don’t want to give it to anyone else.”

“I shan’t move into no house and that’s that!” I said. I’d got to know Dr Fox and liked him well enough, but he was not going to put me into no council house!

“Why don’t I just show it to you?” he asked. “You’ll soon change your mind. Let me show you the house…”

He kept on and on until I gave in, allowing him to drive me over to the half-built house. He was so pleased with himself, but I was not having it at all. He tried to soothe me as he saw the look on my face.

“It really is lovely, Maggie. Your boys will have their own rooms and there’s a garden…”

“Doctor, I don’t mean to upset you, but I ain’t living in no house!”

“But the park is being closed!” he cried. “Your caravan will have to be moved. You must have somewhere to live. Now think about it, please!”

“When have I gotta move off?” I asked.

“A few months’ time,” he said. “You must’ve heard about it.”

I had heard some of the women talking about it, it was true, but I had thought it was all talk. There had been no official word.

“If I go in that house, Doctor, I’ll never be able to get out of it.” I was sure of it. I knew that if I moved into a council house I would be there the rest of me life. Terry was a house-dweller, he would find it so easy to make it his home.

“Well, talk it over with your husband,” he said.

“Over my dead body am I living in that place, so you give it to they that wants it.”

♦

I never slept a wink that night. My future looked bleak if I gave way to the doctor. No more green fields or lanes or hedges to look out on. I had missed it like a physical ache when we had lived in that flat. It was bad enough that I could not travel, as Terry had a full-time job, often working away from home for weeks at a time.

By morning I had a plan. If I had to live in a house, why not buy one that I could sell and leave when the time came? The next morning I took my two babies out on the bus and headed to the edge of Bristol that I knew. I got off the bus at Whitchurch to find an estate agent’s waiting for me opposite the bus stop. It was as if someone was guiding me.

Inside a man named Harry Hewer asked if he could help me.

“Yes, you can,” I said, confident and certain. “I wants to buy a house where there are fields and trees and lanes to walk down.”

Mr Hewer smiled. “I have just the thing.”

He took me in his car and showed me a house not too far up the road. It was far from ideal, but I could see the open countryside out of the windows. I could walk to me heart’s content up the lanes and roads.

“I’ll have it,” I said. We went back to his office for he had paperwork to fill in.

“Have you a deposit?” he asked.

“No, I’ve no money.”

“Have you a job?”

“No,” I said. “But me man has.”

“What does he earn? What are his wages?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Then you’d better find out and bring him to see me.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, “he’s hardly ever home.”

Mr Hewer looked at me for a long minute. “You’d better tell me what’s going on.”

I sat and told him all my problems: that I was a Traveller and my site was closing down, that Dr Fox wanted to put me in a council house. Somehow this mush seemed to under-stand how I felt.

“Have you nothing you could sell to get the deposit?”

“I could sell me trailer,” I said. It was the only thing I had of value.

“How much do you know about the villages round here?” he asked me.

“I have stopped around most of them,” I said. “I know me way really well. Why?”

“Can you use a camera?”

“I could soon enough learn to,” I said.

“Right, we’re in business,” he grinned.

So it was that not only did I buy the house but I had got me a job. I was to get the bus each day with me babies and a loaded camera and take photos of any houses that were for sale in the outlying villages of Bristol. I spoke to owners, too, explaining that Mr Hewer could sell their properties and giving them his contact details.

It took weeks to set up and when my Terry came home for the weekend I told him we were moving. He didn’t put up much of a fight, though he probably would have if he’d known that I had signed his name on the paperwork!

After I sold me trailer I moved into the empty house. We didn’t have a stick of furniture or a single carpet laid, just an old cooker that had been left in the house. Terry was still working away, but Mr Hewer paid me enough for my work that I was able to get a second-hand bed for the main room and beds for the boys. I didn’t really need much else. The house was just to sleep in really, for each day I was out working or walking with my two boys for miles. Terry came back whenever he could and my family visited me often. I had it made but for one thing. Soon they started building new houses all around me. I didn’t like it one bit and me dad upset me deeply when he called in one day.

“Have you heard the cuckoo?” he asked me and I came up short. The cuckoo was a good-luck charm for the coming year and it was important to us to hear it in the springtime.

“No, Dad.” I realised that I hadn’t heard it. “There’s nowhere for him to pitch except the chimney tops – and he won’t sing on one of they.”

“No, my gal, you’re right there.” I was missing the cuckoo’s sweet call for the first time and oh, how it upset me! I had been in that house a year. It was time to move on.

The next day I went back down to see Mr Hewer to arrange a move as far from the new dwellings as possible. “I can’t stick it,” I cried. “They’re smothering me, they just won’t stop building.”

“Come on, Maggie,” he said. “What’s upset you?”

“Lots of things! The people round here don’t want to know me. Worst of all there’s no cuckoo!”

“What on earth are you talking about?” he said.

“I gotta live where I can hear that old bird,” I explained. “It’s bad luck if I don’t.”

He laughed, of course. The old mush didn’t know what I was talking about until I explained it all properly.

He looked at me sympathetically and then said, “Maggie, do you know the village of Paulton?”

Did I know Paulton! “Only like the back of me hand,” I said.

“I have some bungalows being built in the village. They’re only half built and I’d have to sell your house first.”

“Mr Hewer, I wants one of they bungalows.”

“Right then,” he said. “You shall have one.”

♦

I moved in with me sister Emily until that little bungalow of mine was finished. She lived at Clandown, about two miles up the road from Paulton. When I moved into the bungalow my Terry was still away working, but it didn’t dampen my sheer happiness to walk in my beloved lanes again. I was home once again. Me children started in the local school, for although they lived and understood our Romani lifestyle, I was determined as me mam had been to give my children the best of all worlds.

I could easily walk down to me granddad’s grave and by now poor Uncle Jim was also lying in the cemetery. He had been my favourite uncle, so I would spend hours down there, walking and sitting at each headstone. Emily would often join me. She had two children – a boy and a gal – and we spent most of our days together. We were within walking distance of Peasedown St John, but me mam and dad had long since moved on. They had sold Keel’s Hill and bought a bit of land in Ashcott near Bridgwater – very close to the Swine’s Jump Road.

If only I’d had any sense back then. I could easily have sold the bungalow and bought myself a bit of ground. Land was so cheap back then but, like many Travellers, I was ignorant of my own ability to do it. I didn’t realise that, as a property owner, with my man’s work and my own little job, I was well up the ladder. I could’ve chosen however I wanted to live my way of life, be it in a trailer or wagon once more, but I wasn’t educated enough to know my own rights.

♦

In 1976 we lost my sister, our Holly. She was only twenty-five years old when she died and married with three little gals. We traced her illness back to our real granny, Minnie Black-Small. Every old woman who still remembered me granny had said how she used to swell up and be sick, lying in the bender tent for days on end, unable to get up and look after her little ‘uns. Neither the local doctor nor the man from Exeter Hospital knew how to treat her, or even for what. Minnie had died aged twenty-six, just a year older than our Holly.

Holly had been such a fun-loving, happy gal. She had been married to one of the Cole boys, who we had picked peas with as young ‘uns. She had loved her three children with all her being. None of us could cope with her death, not least me parents, who couldn’t bear to have lost another one of their precious chicks.

Only a day later, me mam had a massive heart attack and was rushed to Taunton Hospital. Me dad took an overdose of his tablets, wanting to end his pain. Holly had been so lovely and beautiful to look at and always ready to laugh – she would’ve laughed if her granny’s arse had caught fire. A happy-go-lucky, old-fashioned gal.

She left a great gap in all our lives. We buried her in Glastonbury cemetery, on the hill in the sunshine. It was decided that me parents would bring up the three little gals, so Terry and I moved down to be nearby them.

We helped whenever we could, but I believe it was those three young ‘uns that kept me mam and dad going. By now, most of me dad’s family were dead and me mam was growing ill with heart problems.

♦

In 1985 we took another big blow. Alfie died aged forty-six, leaving six children behind him. How was life to carry on without Alfie? No parents should outlive their chicks, and here were me mam and dad burying their third baby in Peasedown St John. He had never left the village we had settled in all those years ago and his whole family were there.

I was lost without Alfie. Life could never be the same for me now that I had lost my protector, my brother. Alfie – that little mush – had been my best friend and the bane of my existence. How I missed him!

I began working with me dad collecting scrap iron. It was our Alfie who had taught me to use the cutting gear to slice the iron up into bits we could load on to the pickup truck. I did this with me dad for eighteen years, taking the place of the son he had lost. By the end, I could cut and load iron with the best of them and I found it easy to drive the trucks, as my Terry had bought me a cattle lorry years afore. It was a six-cylinder T.K. which I would drive to all the horse fairs. I would hire myself out to farmers and families with newly bought horses.

It was good to work with me dad, but often hard for a small, short-legged person like me. He often forgot that I was a woman with her own man and family and swung between treating me like one of his workmen and his own little gal. We often fell out, but we grew very close and I loved every minute I spent with him, so it hurt all the more when we lost him in 1998.

By the end his health was going fast and he would often stay home while me and a local man collected his scrap and weighed it all in. His old face would light up when we brought back the few pounds we had earned. We would do anything to make him happy, but no matter how hard we worked or how happy we made him we could not give him back his health.

Near the end we packed up and took him to all the well-known stopping places from my youth, everywhere his heart desired. Every day I would fill the tank with fuel and ask him, “Where to today, then, Dad?”

We covered many miles only to find that most of our old beloved stopping places were fenced off or blocked with stones or fences. This upset him badly, especially when I took him back to Chapel Plaister.

“What the bloody hell have they done to our common?” he asked me.

“Well, my dad, it looks like I shan’t be able to drive you round it today.” I had been hoping to drive the car all round the common and let him see the old spots where we had stopped over the years, as he could not walk very far, but like many places we had returned to in those days it was now out of bounds to us. He was devastated.

“Where do my lot stop now?” he asked me.

“I really don’t know, Dad. It must be hard for ’em nowadays.”

♦

For the next six months we travelled hundreds of miles, until finally he could no longer get into the car to head off each day. Soon came the day that he took to his bed and three days later he was gone.

We never knew his real age as he had never been registered as a baby, so there was no trace of his birth to be found, but we worked out he must’ve been about eighty-four. To me, though, he would always be forty-seven. That was the age he had always given if anyone ever asked, even when he had been much younger than that.

Me dad’s death left me shattered. I never again collected any scrap iron or made the Christmas holly wreaths. With his death, the old way of life was gone.