The Faith of a Gypsy

Roy Kerridge

We stood at the doorway of a grey Norman church in East Sussex, look- ing along a narrow lane that wound its way between brown winter hedges.

'They're not coming yet,' a policeman remarked.

Apart from the two policemen, there were five of us: two churchwardens, a red- nosed vicar with a greying Beatle hairstyle, the local gypsy patroness and myself. I had been summoned to this tiny village by the patroness, a jolly, middle-aged woman who had bullied the local council into going ahead with plans to open a gypsy site. She had befriended the Chapman family of gyp- sies, whose head was Jobey, a patriarch in his fifties. Jobey and his wife Mary had held the purse-strings for their clan, for gypsies hand their wages to clan leaders as fast as they earn them, receiving regular pocket money in return. Jobey it was who had become reconciled to living on an 'of- ficial site' as a 'registered gyspy'. He held his tribe together for the formidable licens-

ing ceremony insisted on by the council, and bit his lip and kept his temper as everyone 'signed' a document by making a mark. Few travelling gypsies can read or write. Now the Chapman children would go to school, to the great interest and excite- ment of their parents.

Not an important clan by Romany stan- dards, the family was a popular one, and

had offshoots as far away as Scotland. A large attendance was expected for Jobey's funeral. Only a few weeks earlier, Jobey's

two grown-up sons had driven their bat- tered old car straight into a lorry. Gypsies had invaded the hospital afterwards, and sat in the chapel day after day waiting for news of the young men's progress. One of the young men died, the other would for ever be bedridden. A small outdoor fire had always burned on the gypsy site, but now several larger bonfires were lit, and men huddled round them night after night, talk-

ing and drinking. It was too much for Jobey, who lost interest in life and was now about to follow his son to Hastings cemetery.

While we were waiting at the church, the gypsies back at the unlovely council site, with its high prison walls of wire netting and its ominous gateway awash with muddy water in deep tyre-ruts, were parading solemnly through Jobey's caravan. They were paying respects at the open coffin. We sat down in the empty church and stared at the stained glass window.

'I am the Resurrection and the Life!' the vicar shouted from behind us. Four men in black walked in, with Jobey on their shoulders. Behind them poured a motley throng in drab brown and grey clothes, the blond children staring about in bright-eyed im- pudence. Old Mary, the widow, was held up at either side by her two remaining sons, one of whom would probably be taking Jobey's place as chief. Within minutes the whole church was filled. As the service con- tinued, I studied the unusual congregation. My first thought, as they swept in behind the coffin, was that the church was being invaded by East Enders. The skinhead look has long been fashionable among gypsies, and the features of the rough diamonds I saw around me suggested Canning Town, East Ham and the pubs of Mile End Road. Some of the straggle-haired women and weather-beaten men resembled poor Irish from some forgotten Dublin rookery, and a few men and women looked like pinch- faced Indians with black piercing eyes. Every now and then, the rule against marry- ing outsiders is relaxed among gypsies, only to close again as a new element is absorbed.

Among long-settled East Enders in the land beyond the River Lea (a boundary marked by a gypsy camp of unusual friend- liness) it is very common to meet 'true Cockneys' who boast of a gypsy grand- father. It is now impossible to tell if gypsies are East Enders or vice versa. T. C. Leth- bridge, a gifted historian, archaeologist and expert on the Dark Ages, maintained that Celts lived on among the ruins of Lon- dinium and formed a ready-made popula- tion when the city was rebuilt. He claimed that East Enders, whether swarthy Iberians or blond, beefy Celts, seemed indistinguish- able from the Welsh. Certainly a Welsh dragon marks the approach to the East End, whether at the Strand or on the Em- bankment. Is not the Tower of London still protected by ravens, the birds sacred to the Celtic god-hero, Bran the Blessed? Accor- ding to legend, Bran's severed head, talking to the last, is buried under the Tower and protects the realm. No wonder Bran's peo- ple, the East Enders, recognised the gypsies as kindred spirits. The fierce family-minded brashness of East Ham is used nowadays to keep coloured immigrants at bay. Similarly I have heard old-fashioned gypsies in the midst of the countryside speak of 'Pakis' with contempt, unaware that many scholars believe the Romanies to be descended from travelling Indian musicians and dancers.

`When I went down to see Mary...' a strange voice broke into my reverie.

At first I thought the speaker, a gypsy evangelist named Fitzsimon, was quoting a modern version of the Bible. Then I realised that he knew nearly everyone in the Chap- man family by name, and was referring to the unhappy widow. He was a great im- provement on the vicar, who seemed to view the mourners with some trepidation. The evangelist's lapses from grammar (`we was all greatly distressed') disturbed his au- dience not at all. They gazed at him raptly, swelling with pleasure whenever a family name was mentioned, but never losing their air of solemnity. One young man, whose blond bristly hairstyle seemed a com-

promise between Teddy boy and skinhead, stared with protruding eyes, his mouth hanging open as he concentrated on every word.

Both the gypsy patroness and myself were curious about the gypsy view of the after-life. No ancient 'gypsy religion' ap- pears to have survived into modern times. Fitzsimon spoke of Jobey and other Chap- mans as having 'received Jesus into their lives', but I doubt if they could have done so in the usual chapel-temperance manner, and still have remained gypsies, and popular ones at that. As far as I can tell, most gypsies have the same half-ribald, half-believing attitude to Christianity as most council estate dwellers. They go to church on family occasions and tell their children, 'Nan has gone to live with Jesus', vaguely veering between mild faith and mild scepticism. Around Romany fires, ghost stories are often told and believed, but I do not think that Heaven, Hell or reincarna- tion are discussed.

`One thing about travellers, the family is very important,' the evangelist continued. `You all want to be together as a family. That's why it's so upsetting when you lose someone. But if you follow the Christian way, no family can be disunited, for you all shall meet again in Heaven, where Jobey and the others are waiting to see you. "In My Father's house are many mansions." ' At this the congregation looked dismayed, for most of them had a horror of council bungalows, let alone Heavenly manor houses.

`Of course, you don't like mansions,' the preacher amended hastily, 'In My Father's house are many trailers...'

Flattered, the audience leaned forward, serious to the last. A glamorous woman in blue appeared, perhaps the preacher's wife, and they sang 'Abide With Me' as a duet.

Jobey was carried outside again and the coffin placed in a hearse covered in flowers, the word 'Dad' written in blooms upon an upright hoarding on the roof. As he was driven to Hastings cemetery, a long way away, the mourners followed in a long line of cars. This was the reason the police

`Thanks to watching nasty videos, I gel free nightmares.'

had been called out, and officers appeared now and again along the way to see that all went well. The gypsy patroness and I followed last of all, 60 stocky, brightly col- oured vehicles moving along in front of us. Most of the Chapmans were tree-loppers and drive-tarmackers, but had left their usual battered vans and lorries behind out of respect.

`Don't you think the fence around the gypsy site makes it look rather like a con- centration camp?' I asked my hostess.

'Well, the Chapmans like it, as they're afraid of an invasion by Irish tinkers. That seems to be their chief fear. They had hoped there would be a telephone on the site.

"Oh, ma'am, suppose the Irish come in the night, how will we tell you?" Jobey ask- ed me. You see, the council have the right to evict gypsies whenever they like, pro- viding there is a gypsy site to send them to. But over here they were evicting them before the site was ready! When it actually was ready, the council told them, "No bon- fires and no animals". Of course the Chap- mans let out a great wail and nearly left then and there but as I'm on the -council myself, the matter was straightened out.'

The original idea behind the Caravan Sites Act of 1968 might have been to make gypsies stay in one place. However, Jobey got round that by declaring that his clan would pay rent whether their trailers were there or not, so that they could travel across Kent and Sussex and still come back whenever they wanted to. Since hop- picking has been mechanised, the Chap- mans have had a hard time finding work. They breed fighting cocks as a sideline, and one of the first things that Jobey asked about when he moved in was where the local cock fights took place. A permanent address meant that the gypsies could now draw dole.

Despite the many advantages of council sites, I regard the municipalising of gypsies with horror, and would sooner put Shelley's skylark in a cage.

As we sped past the imposing towers of Battle Abbey, I remembered another gypsy site I had once visited, in the heart of Pem- brokeshire. Instead of wire netting, a hedge had surrounded the caravans of a scrap- dealing branch of the Lovells. The entrance to the site was marked by whitewashed boulders, with 'Elvis is King' painted on them in bright scarlet. An improvised 18th- century-style gateway had been constructed out of an enormous iron wheel and a bedstead or two. Old man Lovell, a patriarch with a fund of stories, had been out when I had called. His mother had been `a gypsy queen', and when she died, travellers turned up from all over Wales. An old couple, chief and chieftainess, rule nearly every gypsy camp. When the last of the two has died, their trailer is put to the torch and becomes a funeral bonfire. These Welsh Lovells, who helped with the potato picking, were popular among the locals, as they were contrasted with the hated hippies who also camped nearby.

'Poor gypsies, fancy having hippies on their doorstep,' a farmer sympathised.

Hastings cemetery, laid out on a hillside, was a cold and windy spot. Taking short cuts across the lawns, the mourners swarm- ed down the hill to Jobey's open grave, where they formed a large circle. From afar

we could hear the, wails of poor Mary, rising

and falling, as she was held hack from jum- ping into the deep clay pit to join her hus- band. Someone grinned, and although most of the crowd was solemn, an expectant, festival atmosphere took over. Clods of earth were taken from a tray and tossed in- to the pit. Several families thanked my friend for coming along, deep gratitude in their eyes. Wild-looking women told her of their tribulations, when housed by the council, and how happy they had felt when they finally ran away from a house and took to the roads again.

'I'm back on a camp site now,' a genial, grey-haired man told us. One of his teeth stuck out in advance of its brothel's, giving him a distinctive look. 'After being blamed for everything that went wrong, with the council round every day, I was that glad to get out from under a roof you wouldn't believe! The only way is to be among your own kind, far from house people.'

All the same I thought I saw a regretful look steal over his amiably crumpled features. I later learned that he had blocked the street outside his house with broken cars, so perhaps his neighbours had some cause to complain.

Just then, to my enchantment, a lorry ar- rived, laden with wreaths and large floral ornaments. These were set around the grave — images of upright men and women made of blossoms, each about two feet high.

Several cat-size flower-horses pulled ploughs, shepherds of many colours tended yellow, red and white sheep, and floral effigies of .lobey's favourite possessions were placed in a row. These included a bed, an armchair and a square flowery television set with 'Dallas' inscribed on a screen of Petals. Perhaps some gypsies really are Egyptians, the last of the Pharaohs, and ex- pect to find their belongings waiting in' the next world, the television already tuned to their favourite programme. Here lies a valuable clue to the Faith of a Gypsy.

The genial man with the big tooth had once worked for the same farmer as 1 had done, years before. We knew some travellers in common, and he grew quite talkative, saying that a firm of florists near- by were expert in making wreaths and models to gypsy instructions. Afterwards my hostess, whom I scarcely knew, drove me back to her house for tea. I was delighted to find that she was a Lady of the Manor, living among old wooden stair- cases, panelled rooms, priest holes and all the Elizabethan trimmings. Long , ago gypsies had put themselves under noble Protection, taking the surnames of their protectors, such as Lovell, Berners or Stanley. So perhaps there will one day be a gypsy clan named Moore, after their Sussex benefactress, the mot her of the gifted Spec- tator writer, Charles Moore.