Free The Girl in the Painted Caravan by Eva Petulengro

short, secret meetings on the promenade during the summer. Before too long, Daddy proposed to Mummy and, almost to her surprise,
she accepted. She was too terrified to tell her family anything about it. But they went ahead and, as the season was drawing to an end, made the necessary arrangements, and one morning they took
the plunge and were quickly and secretly married in a gorger church.
    Still, Mummy was too frightened to tell anyone and, despite Daddy’s pleadings, she actually continued to live at home as a single girl for six whole weeks until, one day, she managed to
pluck up enough courage to tell her mother. Granny insisted that the young man be brought before her immediately.
    My mother went to get my father and she led him into the field where the family wagons were resting. There was a whole crowd of Romanies jostling around him and he thought for a moment that he
was actually going to get lynched.
    Granny’s first words to the newlyweds before her were ‘You horrible little people.’ But she followed this up with a stern question to Daddy: ‘What will you have to
drink?’
    ‘I’ll have a whisky please,’ he said, in as confident a voice as he could muster.
    ‘You’ll have a beer like the rest of my sons!’ Granny snorted.
    My father knew then that, even though there was still a stern inquisition ahead, he had been accepted into the family. He followed meekly when Granny beckoned him inside the vardo, where he was
interrogated about himself, his people, what he’d done and what he was intending to do. The cross-examination ended with a grim warning that if he ill-treated his wife, he would be a dead
man. And on that cheerful note, they became friends.
    Then came the Romany wedding ceremony. In this, the couple mingled blood by pricking their thumbs with a pin or a needle, as Indians do when they become blood brothers. Daddy was made to jump
over fire and water, which seemed like child’s play compared to the interrogation he had just been subjected to. This was to signify that he would go through any dangers for his new bride.
All of this was accompanied by heavy drinking and a great deal of hilarity, though Romanies take the meaning of the ceremony with great seriousness.
    Since my parents had not eloped, they had to do so now. While the party and the toasts were proceeding merrily, they slipped away to Daddy’s small flat on the other side of town. At last
they could start married life, even though they had now been legally married for over six weeks!
    They can’t have ever really talked about what they thought their married life would be like. I know Mummy assumed that they would live as Romanies, and they only lived in my father’s
flat for a couple of weeks before they borrowed Granny’s old wooden vardo which would be their home for a number of years. I suspect it was all an adventure to begin with for my father, who
was very impulsive. Perhaps he didn’t understand what he was taking on – a large family with close ties, a way of life that existed alongside but separate from his own society, with
strict rules of behaviour. When I was older, I always sensed he felt out of place with Romany men, who tended to talk obsessively about their horses and the next horse fair, neither of which held
any interest for my father.
    I was born on 18 March 1939, in Granny’s painted caravan, in the same bed my mother had been born in. That month Hitler invaded what was left of Czechoslovakia, and Britain and France
promised to support Poland should Germany turn its greedy eyes in that direction. On 1 September 1939 Germany did indeed invade Poland. Britain and France demanded they withdraw and when their
ultimatum was rejected, on 3 September, we declared war.
    It was inevitable that men of fighting age would soon be conscripted into the army. Many Romany men didn’t feel part of British society. They asked for nothing and took nothing, but, as
they saw it, they exchanged their talents