A FIELD FULL OF BUTTERFLIES
By Rosemary Penfold
Early Memories

     I sat on a hard floor.  Above me soared a huge bed in which lay a tiny person, propped up on enormous billowy pillows.  Two other people stood near the bed.  They spoke quietly to each other and to the little person in the bed.  I was chewing on something that tasted good.  Someone kept bending down to wipe my face.  I now know this to be my mother and father.  This is my very first memory.  


     I was born on St Valentine’s day 1938 to one Romany parent (my father) and one gadje in a real gypsy wagon or vardoe, (a real gypsy would never call it a caravan), being the eldest of four.  I arrived in this world in my parent’s bed which was set into the far wall of the wagon with heavy mirrored doors that were drawn across in the day time.  I spent the first few months of my life sharing this bed with my parents, as also in later years did my three brothers.  By some miracle we all survived being squashed or suffocated. 

As I grew older, I was relegated to the lower bed, directly beneath my parents, also with doors that drew across.  When I was eight, my father bought another wagon so I could have a bed to myself, as until then I had shared with my three younger siblings.  That had made the bed seem smaller and was uncomfortable, noisy and quarrelsome to say the least.  I well remember staying awake for what seemed like hours, waiting for the latest addition to the family to stop screaming so that I could say my prayers, convinced that God would never be able to hear me above his screams.


     I also experienced several very bad nights in this bed due to my eavesdropping as one of my aunts recounted a story in hushed tones she had heard about a baby being born with two heads.  I lay night after night, stiff with terror, convinced that this horror was crouched at the bottom of my bed, just waiting for me to fall asleep.  I was always surprised to find myself alive and unscathed in the mornings.


     The wagon was tiny inside apart from the beds, but contained ingenious storage space for everything we could possibly need.  There was a food cupboard, a little stove, a chair and a long cupboard on the left of the stove near the door in which our clothes were kept.  Two large blackened kettles were always on the stove as was the old heavy smoothing iron which our mother heated on the stove to iron our clothes.  Also a brass toasting fork hung on a hook nearby. 

To the other side of the doorway was a long corner cupboard with a mirror above, a shelf below on which a small aluminium bowl with a lump of carbolic was kept and an enamel jug for use of hand washing.  In the cupboard above were my fathers shaving accoutrements, including his cut-throat razor, strop, shaving brush, soap and hairbrush.  Next to this were a bench seat and a small table under the window where my mother kept the teapot and made the tea. 

The willow pattern china was kept above between the bed and the window in another corner cupboard that had glass doors with half curtains made of pretty lace.  The floor was covered with linoleum, the area being no more than about four feet by four.  Yet six people managed to live in this tiny space.  It must have seemed impossible to outsiders with their big houses and other modern conveniences, but we managed very well, mainly because we were never indoors.  From dawn until dusk, rain or shine we played outside.


     I can never remember having a cold or coughs, only the usual childhood ailments such as chicken pox and mumps.  I well remember those times as it was the only time I had my parent’s undivided attention, and was even “spoilt” a little, which was a luxury.  Once, when I had mumps, I was feeling really poorly and I remember the doctor whispering to my mother that I needed some vitamin C.  My father disappeared and was gone all day.  Late that night he came in with a large brown bag which he emptied over the table.  Oranges, lemons and a jar of honey rolled out and my mother made me lemon drinks to soothe my throat.  Now I wonder how he was able to get them, as it was the war years and fruit was very difficult to get hold of.  But my father always seemed to come up trumps.


     So our lives were lived out in the fresh air.  We cooked and ate outside, did the washing, shelled peas and a million other jobs besides.  One of my teachers once asked me, one bitterly cold winter, if we were cold in the caravan.  I gazed at her in amazement.

     “No, of course not”, I replied, “We are lovely and warm!”

     I could see she didn’t believe me, poor soul, as she stared at me in pity.  How could she possibly know how cosy and warm we were as we ate our huge plates of rabbit stew with doorsteps of bread and butter, the little stove glowing red hot and three candles sending dancing shadows up the wall.

Sunday night was bath night.  My mother heated up the water in the clothes boiler and pulled out the old tin bath.  The boiler was housed in a corrugated tin roofed building with open sides to the front as a doorway that my father had built in the yard where our wagon was sited.  We called this “the wash house.” Wood was pushed into the burner below and water poured into the top.  This boiler was shared by all the families in the camp.  In the summer we bathed outside, but when it was cold it was squeezed in front of the range in the wagon.  We used the same water for all four of us, my brothers Nelson, Teddy and Christopher and I. 

I always went first, wallowing in the luxury of warm clean water which was topped up at intervals from a tall enamel jug.  I have no doubt that it was pretty mucky after we had all used it.  Then, not a drop was wasted as it was put on the garden.  This was followed by fresh clean underwear and then bed.  In those days this underwear had to last the whole week.  Unthinkable now, but then we had very few clothes and washing was only done once a week.  This was quite common amongst all schoolchildren then.  It was no wonder that our teachers used to ask us to stand well away from the desk when we needed to speak to her; I expect we all smelt a bit strong.  In fact, she was not above sending some of the boys out to wash their dirty necks.

The “Nit nurse” used to visit our school regularly.  Dirty gypsies we might have been but we were never sent home with a note from the nit nurse.  This was due to the fact that every Friday night without fail, Granny used to line us up and go through our hair with a nit comb.  As my cousin Violets’ and mine was waist length and worn in plaits, this was half an hour of torture.  We didn’t dare move or she would thump our heads with the comb.  She continued to drag this comb through our hair until she was satisfied that nothing was in it that shouldn’t have been.  It was a painful experience but it must have worked because we never once caught head lice.

Monday was washday whatever the weather.  My father used to light the boiler about seven in the morning so that it would be hot by about eight o’ clock.  My mother washed the sheets first as they had to be dried by the evening.  One sheet per bed was all we had.  These would be poked and prodded with a bleached wooden stick for the purpose sending up clouds of steam which would envelope my mother.  These would be rinsed in cold water in the bath tub by hand and then fed through the mangle before being hung on the long line which ran all the way up the garden.  Then in would go the coloureds followed by the darks. 

This took the whole day, and by the time she had finished her hands were red raw and bleeding.  If the sheets weren’t quite dry by the afternoon mum would iron them with the heavy flat iron kept hot on the range.  She would pull the table out to iron on and wrap a cloth around the iron handle to save her hands being burned.  I always liked the bit when she would spit on the iron to see if it was hot enough.

Aunt Prissy was my fathers’ elder sister.  She had four daughters; my cousins Mary, Prissy, Betty and Rosina, all very attractive girls.  Aunt Prissy and her family lived in a tent and a beautiful wagon wonderfully painted in reds and blues outside.  Inside it sparkled with glass and crystal mirrors which pulled across two double beds in a similar fashion to my parents’ own wagon.  The wagon was fitted throughout with everything needed for every day living but was the best and sparkled with colour.  She had the best china, crystal glass, pure white linen and lace.  There was no room for clutter.

We sometimes sat in Aunt Prissy’s tent unravelling old woollen garments so that the wool could be used to tie flowers in bunches.  That was when I learned to make paper roses and soon became good at it.

It was on one of these cosy winter evenings when my brother Nelson leaned back against a lighted candle, setting alight his shirt.  In seconds the flame shot up his back and we all screamed in fright.  My aunt Prissy beat the flames with her bare hands and in seconds they were out leaving a scorched hole in his shirt.  We did not realise then what an escape he’d had.   My mother banned us from flower making by candle-light from then on, but we still went whenever we got the chance.

Aunt Prissy loved smart clothes and always looked very nice whenever she went out.  She died young so I cannot remember much about her, but one day she came home in a beautiful brown coat.  My mother told me later it was made from wool and cashmere and cost forty pounds.  Our Granny had scolded her for spending so much money, but Aunt Prissy didn’t mind and swanned about in her new coat which she knew suited her very well.  Sad to say, she died very shortly after and was buried in her new coat.

She also had some pretty rings and one day we were jumping over the ditch which led from the wash house drain when I saw a glint in the soapy water trickling down the gully.  Very carefully, I grasped the treasure in my fingers and realised it was a pretty gold ring with blue stones.  I placed it on my skinny finger and paraded around with my hand held high, then ran to show my mother my prize.  Her mouth fell open in shock.

“Where did you find this?  It’s Aunt Prissy’s ring!” she gasped as she snatched it from my finger.  Then she rushed over to Aunt Prissy to return it, telling her where I had found it.  She gave me three pence and I was as pleased with that as she was to get her ring back.

As with Gypsy tradition, her wagon was burned after she was buried.  I remember the flames leaping high into the air and the noise of cracking and hissing smoke mingled with the wailing of women.  I was too young to feel a sense of wrong; that’s how things were done then.  Only my mother commented with tears in her eyes, “That was the girls’ home!”

That same Gypsy wagon would be worth a fortune today, but I don’t think homes are burned these days.

Granny and Granfer

  My grandparents were true travelling gypsies.  They had travelled the length and breadth of the country countless times before settling in two fields and a paddock for the horses in the heart of Somerset.  Granny was said to have entered the gates after her purchase and uttered these immortal words:

     “This yer be ower ground, and there aint nobuddy goin’ to move we no more!”

     And so it was, though many tried over the years, but granny had perfected the art of dumb insolence from birth and never lost a battle.  So granny and granfer brought up their large family of twelve children in a wagon and a tent and made a good job of it.

     Granny was a true Romany and looked it.  She was tiny with piercing black eyes and a roman nose.  Her hair was silver and wound around her head in two plaits above heavy jet earrings which dangled from her stretched, pierced earlobes.  Her family regarded her with the deepest respect, and not a little fear.  She was spotlessly clean and used a separate bowl for each job.  She would turn in her grave if she could see the all-purpose bowls that we use today.  I often wonder if granny had Jewish blood; she had many Jewish ways.

     Granny used to take all her grandchildren over the fields with her to pick wild flowers which we would then sell door to door in nearby villages.  We picked baskets of cowslips, primroses and wild orchids which granny called “hawkits”.  How sad I felt when I realised years later that they would never grow again.

 In the autumn she would hand us large wicker baskets and we went gathering sloes and blackberries.  We sold the blackberries to a man who came twice a week.  He paid us a shilling a pound and we gave this straight to our mothers.  It helped pay for our school clothes.  We saw nothing odd about this as money was always tight.  Granny made gin with the sloes, which I was told was delicious.
 On misty autumn mornings we would get up early and run through dew wet gra
ss to collect enormous baskets of wild mushrooms.  A handful of berries and a freshly picked mushroom would made a tasty and filling breakfast, though I would never eat a raw mushroom if I was alone as I could never quite trust my own judgement.  I was afraid that it might be a toadstool pretending to be a mushroom. 

Granny would show us where to gather the plants she dried and used as herbs and medicines and we spent hours collecting them.  Once home, she would hang them in bunches from racks in the ceiling of the hut.  With these, she had a remedy for every ill.  Every Friday she gave us a dose of whatever she thought was needed and there was no escape. Though I often think we got better in spite of her cures.

Granny was never wrong about anything.  For instance, she thought she was a wonderful cook.  She wasn’t.  Even As a child I realised this, but she had so indoctrinated her family with this idea that they all thought so as well and so always appeared to enjoy her meals.  My mother gave us a varied diet and even made gravy, which Granny thought quite foolish.  Granny only made gravy once, when she was looking after us for the day.  My parents had gone out and so Granny tried to be kind and made us some gravy to go on our dinner.  When it came to the table, she had to cut it into slices before she could put it on our plates.  We knew better than to say one word about it and manfully ate without comment.  No one asked for seconds.

It was the same with her stews.  They weren’t so bad – it was the dumplings that went with them.  When she added them to the boiling morass, they sunk without trace, only to be discovered later as solid and rock hard as they had gone in, welded to the bottom of the stew pot.

I think my Granny invented one–stage cookery.  She boasted that she never weighed anything.  The results testified to that.  She had a large coal range which she would get really hot while she threw all her ingredients into a large bowl.  At least five pounds of flour and whatever she had in the way of fat, dried fruit and sugar.  She also would add a large lump of salt cut from the block.  This would then be roughly mixed together with water and a couple of eggs, scraped into any handy container and thrust into the furnace hot oven. 

Periodically she would inspect this culinary experiment until she judged it to be ready.  This could be anything from ten minutes to an hour depending on the size of the tin, but of course it never was cooked properly, but strangely, smelt delicious.  If any of us children were unlucky enough to be around when it was taken out of the oven, we were given a huge slice each and watched closely by a pair of questioning eyes.  So we would make appropriate noises to show our delight and approval.  If we came across the lump of salt, it was swallowed without a word or grimace.

Her pastry would be made using the same method as her cakes.  She never cut the pastry to fit the plate but rolled it out in all directions into a large, rubbery, rough circle shape, then placed it over the plate. Then she rummaged around a bit until all the fruit or whatever contents she was using was in the centre.  Then, in a sudden burst of activity, she flapped the pastry edges to the centre until it was several layers thick over the filling.  Of course, it was never cooked through and when sliced up was really revolting.  We usually tried to make ourselves scarce whenever this “delicacy” was dished up, but were caught later and offered an oversized slice.

The worst part of this charade was the fact that my maternal grandmother: “Granny in town”, was an excellent cook.  Her cakes and pastries just melted in the mouth and we always had room for more.  She often sent down some of these for Sunday tea.  Gypsy Granny would fix us with her bright black eyes and demand to know who was the best cook, herself or Granny in town?  Cowards that we were, we always replied, “Oh, you of course Granny! You’re the best”.  I always felt guilty afterwards, but I knew my other granny would have understood that we had no choice and maybe even chuckled over it.

One day, last summer, I was walking down a country road when the smell of paint wafted towards me on a warm summer breeze.  At once I was six years old again, watching Granny stirring her paint.  This was a lengthy annual ritual. She would go to her paint cupboard and drag out several rusty tins, prize the lids off and peer suspiciously into each one to see if it was still usable.  Then she poked her nose down inside to smell it.  I don’t know why she did this, but I always expected her nose to come out dripping with paint.  It never did. 

When she was satisfied with her collection, she would tip the contents of some of the tins into the largest and stir it with a stick until it was blended into a uniform ghastly brown.  This was followed by much movement and scraping of tables and other furniture which would all end up outside the hut.  The hut was quite large and contained some large pieces of furniture, some of which would have been worth quite a small fortune these days had they survived in their original state. 

But Granny never left them like that.  She arranged them in a neat row, picked up her brush and tin and started to slap it on.  She never prepared the furniture in any way, just waited for the first hot day and painted everything in sight, adding more layers to those already there, like the rings on a tree.  She only took a short time over it, and when she had finished, she would lean back proudly, wiping her brow as she surveyed her accomplishment.  All was left to dry in the hot sun.  It never quite dried though, and for months we would discover paint stains on legs and clothes.  My aunties always had paint stained knuckles after opening cupboard doors and forgetting to use their fingertips.  By the time it was really dry, it was time for Granny to start all over again.

Granny’s place was a very large chicken house made into one large bedroom and a kitchen/living room.  It was a great improvement on the tent and wagon she had previously been living in.  A chicken house does not sound very homely, but when Granny had scrubbed it and painted the outside her favourite shade of brown, it was all that Granny desired.  She put linoleum on the floor, added a scrubbed pine table and a beautiful range that was kept glowing summer and winter.  Sometimes Granny would let us play cards in front of it in the winter. 

Seven card brag was our favourite and we would play for hours, chatting and laughing, sometimes cheating, but always comfortable in each others company.  Sometimes Granny or one of our uncles would tell us to be quiet if we got too noisy.  Granny was a little deaf and sometimes got hold of the wrong end of the stick.  One of us commented on someone coughing.  Granny said at once, “What a thing for chavvys to be talking about – coffins!”  This sent us into fits of laughter much to her bemusement.

Shortly thereafter, Granny had a letter from the council demanding that she take it down as it was now a home and only moveable dwellings were allowed on her land.  Over the months, letter followed letter.  My mother read them to Granny as she had never learned to read.  She told her that Granny needed a solicitor, but Granny refused and ignored all the letters.  Then men came from the council.  Granny politely invited them in and gave them each a cup of tea, liberally laced with whiskey.  After several cups of this, they neither knew nor cared what Granny did.  They sent more men.  Granny fed them tea and behaved as though they weren’t there.  Finally another letter came saying Granny could keep the chicken house!  Well, Granny always knew she would.

Granfer slept in the bedroom which he shared with my Uncle Alfie.  Alfie’s bed a double, Granfer’s a high old hospital bed.  He suffered with bronchitis for the last fifteen years or so of his life and could not do any heavy work, although he still bought and sold at the markets and sale rooms, but Granny went out with her basket most days.  She was a very tiny person, about seven stone in weight and about five feet tall, so I was amazed one day when I tried to pick up her basket.  It was so heavy!  Yet she carried it for five or six hours at a time.  When she sold holly and mistletoe at Christmas, she must have been worn out by the end of the day, yet she never showed it. 

Each day, when she had sold everything, she filled her basket with groceries from the proceeds and always brought Granfer back a treat.  A packet of snuff, a small bottle of whisky or cough drops.  She seemed to enjoy giving these small gifts to the man she called “My Edwin”.  He would smile and thank her as if she was a queen, and she was in his eyes.  Sometimes my uncles would chide her for spending her hard earned money in this way, but her ears were deaf to them.  So she continued this way until he died, which he did early one morning and in his own bed, as gently and as peacefully as he had lived.  Granny commented sadly that now there was no one left to call her “Mary Ann”.  I stood by Granny as she looked upon him in his coffin.  He looked so young.  She moved the kiss curl into the centre of his forehead and kissed his cheek.

“He was the only man I ever kissed,” she whispered.  “He was a good man, my Edwin.  Yes he was.”

My Granfer - what can I tell you about him?  I would need a dozen books to do him justice.  He was tall, thin and as brown as the leather on the horse’s saddles.  His hair was silver with a kiss curl in the middle of his forehead.  He wore an old brown trilby hat on the back of his head and to me looked very dashing.  He was a quiet man, but very kind and loving.  Granny was his heart’s delight.  I know this because I often heard him tell her so.  He deserved our respect and he got it.  He used to call me “My pretty” and “My flower” and that used to make me feel very special.

When I was very young, I imagined that God must look like Granfer, because his face was full of love, just like the pictures of Jesus I had seen on my Aunt Betsy’s wall.  We all loved him very much, but despite this we teased him sometimes.
My brother put a firework under his chair once, just as he was dozing.  He leapt up as though he had been shot and chased us, waving his walking stick, but we did not fear him as we knew he would never harm us.

“Mary Ann, Mary Ann!” he would shout to Granny, “These varmints are up to their tricks again!”

Granny was the one we had to avoid.  She had a firm belief that Satan made work for idle hands and so made sure we always had something to do.

Early in spring and summer, Granfer would get up and make a camp fire.  Then he would fill the old black kettle, put it on the hook to boil and the blackened frying pan would be filled with yesterdays’ leftover potato and cabbage with a nice bit of fatty bacon and sliced apple.  That would be his breakfast.  Then he would set to whittling his pegs.  Sometimes he would carve wooden flowers.  They sold very well at the markets.  I liked his flower baskets best.  He would cut the thickest briars and remove the thorns and use these to form a basket on a flat wooden base with a handle of twisted withies.  Then he placed a clump of primroses or cowslips inside and they would look so pretty!  He was very deft with his fingers.

Granfer loved his horses.  They were treated like his own children.  Their coats gleamed in the sun; their harness brasses sparkled and shone.  He plaited their manes with many coloured ribbons, harnessed them up to the red and silver cart and then went off for most of the day.  We children never knew where he went, but his breath always smelt strongly of cough sweets when he returned.

He used to visit all the markets and with his horse, Billy Pony and brightly painted cart he was well known in the village and towns round about.  He would buy horses and unbroken colts, spending hours breaking them in to the saddle and harness. 

It was a treat then to help with the horses.  First we would unbuckle the harnesses, and then give them a rub down and a good brush.  Then we would give them a bucket of fresh water and a bag of oats.  When they had rested for a while, Granfer let them loose in the paddock.  What fun they had!  They ran and rolled in the lush grass like children on a beach.  Billy Pony would return to Granfer to snuffle in his pockets and blow in his ear. 

“They allus comes back in the end” he would say.  “If you let ‘em go they allus comes back”.

Sometimes the yard was very quiet with everyone out and about and just a few of us young ones left behind.  He would sit in his armchair in front of the red hot stove, curling his kiss curl with his index finger, making sure it was dead centre of his forehead, all the while humming or singing softly to himself.  I would sit opposite, roasting hot behind the stove listening to Granfer while he arranged his hair.  I remember feeling a blissful peace in those times.  Granfer was a quiet man. Even when he shook his stick at us and called us “Varmints” his eyes still laughed at us.  He enjoyed our childish ways and we in turn enjoyed his company with all the love and respect we could give a real Gypsy gentleman.