Rodney’s dad, Dick Drake, ran the main part of his business from the land around his caravan, stripping down old cars and trucks, repairing them if he could or dealing in the scrap metal that he was able to salvage. He was always working, always making a living wherever he could, always keeping his eye out for an opportunity to make a profitable deal. He owned another scrapyard further away from Norwich in Buxton, where I worked with Rodney all through our first winter together. Their plan was to clear the land because they were trying to get planning permission for houses so they could sell it on to a developer at a profit. There were hundreds of rusty old lorries and cars piled up there that needed to be dismantled, carted off and sold.
Despite the fact that it was hard work, especially on cold days, it seemed a romantic lifestyle to me, nothing like I had imagined it would be from all the things I had heard being said about gypsies in the pubs by people who didn’t actually know any. Everyone who knew Dick loved him because he was the genuine article, a tiny, wiry little man, only weighing seven or eight stone, with a trilby hat permanently set at a jaunty angle on his head, always laughing, always friendly.
I soon learned that all the gypsy families stick together and are totally loyal to one another. I guess it happens with any people who have been as persecuted down the ages as they have. Having come from parents who could never be relied on for anything by anyone, not even to protect us or be there for us, it was a revelation. Such ferocious loyalty has its downside too, of course, and can often lead to disagreements breaking out when family members clash with the outside world and others wade in to support them, particularly when there is drink involved. There were a lot of fights going on, especially when we went out to the pubs. I had seen fights before when I was a child, and I had seen a lot of violence at home with Dad, but I had never seen anything like the level of violence the gypsies were capable of when they felt they were being threatened or disrespected. Even the women fought like men, never hesitating to get stuck into the thick of it, landing punches and doling out vigorous kickings to anyone who got in their way. I witnessed a lot of pubs being wrecked during those years as every stick of furniture was smashed up and turned into a weapon.
Rodney himself was never a man to go looking for trouble, but he was never one to back down if it came along either. If an argument was nothing to do with us he might walk away, but more often there would be a reason why he would be at the centre of it. I took my role as his partner very seriously and would stand by him in public whatever happened, even if it meant landing a few good punches myself. I had some experience of fighting because Dad would actually encourage Terry and me to fight when we were little, urging us on to punch each other properly and not just pull hair and scratch. I remember one time I made Terry’s lip bleed with a punch and I felt terrible about it but Dad praised me and wouldn’t let Terry hit me back.
There was never any telling when his violence would explode. I remember an argument with a lodger who had eaten Dad’s chocolate biscuits by mistake. He beat the poor guy to a pulp in front of us, splattering the sitting room in his blood as he punched and kicked and threw him around, getting all his stuff and hurling it out into the street.
In some ways it was good to release some of the anger that I had pent up inside me after all the years when I had been unable to fight back against Dad because I was too little, too powerless. That’s why I sometimes let myself be drawn in to fights, particularly when it was to defend another member of Rodney’s family.
He was a real believer in families sticking together and although he continued to insist I had no contact with Dad, he worked hard at trying to repair my relationship with Mum. She had broken up with her partner now, so she was able to come out with us without fear of angering him. If it was Mothers’ Day or Christmas, Rodney would be the one telling me to ring Mum up and invite her out for dinner. It was as though he wanted to build a relationship with her to make up for the fact that he didn’t get on that well with his own mother. I was happy for him to do that because I wanted to have her in my life and was pleased that she always agreed to whatever we suggested. I wanted my children to know their grandmother. After Mum left home I hadn’t seen or heard from my maternal grandparents again for eight years. I remembered all too acutely what it felt like to have no relations who would send me a card on my birthday or a present at Christmas, and I was determined to do everything I could to give my children as big an extended family as possible.
My father’s mother was the only grandparent who had been around in my childhood and she had never even pretended that she liked me. Dad had been the centre of her world and when I finally told the police about what he had done to me she never forgave me. When he was taken to court and convicted for living off my immoral earnings she was waiting outside to scream abuse at me as I came out in front of the whole world, calling me a whore and a liar. She knew everything about Dad and his lifestyle, so she knew that I was telling the truth, but she couldn’t forgive me for sticking up for myself and for denouncing Dad in public. I suppose she thought I had betrayed her family in some way.
I wanted Brendan to have nicer memories of his grandmother than that. I could never understand why Mum’s parents had wanted nothing more to do with us once Mum had left. Why had they not even sent us cards at Christmas or on our birthdays? Why had they acted as though we didn’t exist? What could I possibly have done to offend them so terribly by the time I was six years old that they would want nothing more to do with me? Their disappearance had served to reinforce the idea in my head that Dad must be right, that I must be worthless and unlovable and that he was the only one who was ever going to care for me. I never wanted Brendan to think such thoughts about himself for even a second.
I have to admit that Mum could be good company on these family outings, if I could forget about all the resentment I had stored up inside me about what had happened in the past. When we were all together as a family and everything was buzzing it was often possible to ignore the little voices in the back of my head that were goading me on to ask her why she treated us the way she did. While part of me longed for us to all get on like one big happy family, another part always wanted to punish her in some way for her crimes against her children. The logical part of my brain would tell me that there was no point thinking like that. Rodney was right; what was past was past and there was no point dwelling on it. But those voices were always there, even if I managed to drown them out with noise and distraction for most of the time.
I’m not saying Mum’s life was easy, but then whose life is? Once I was a mother myself I couldn’t understand how she could bear to let eight years drift by without even trying to do something to help her own children. When you have children of your own running around it focuses your mind on what happened to you when you were their age and makes you see things afresh. There was no way I would let Brendan anywhere near a monster like my father, not even with me there to protect him, so how could she have left us completely alone with him like that?
I didn’t ask her, though. Not then, at least.
Rodney was a brilliant family man. His commitment to his children was total and from the first moment we got together he included Brendan in that. Whenever the kids were with us he would be coming up with ideas for things to do with them, like driving off into the countryside, all of us piled into the cab of one of his trucks together, and having a picnic. Or we would go for a barbecue on the beach. He would always include Mum in these outings as well, arranging to pick up her and my young half-brother Adam who had been born in 1981, when I was fifteen.
Rodney might have been a bit stricter with discipline sometimes than I thought was absolutely necessary, but the kids all appeared to forgive him the odd smack and had grown used to being shouted at when they didn’t obey him immediately. He insisted on instant obedience from all of us,