CHAPTER 15
“What’s a diddycoy, Loz?”

“Ah, love, it’s one of those words that has two meanings. Two uses, really. See, Ken’s Romany, mother and father. Me, it’s just my Dad, so that makes me a sort of mongrel, and the old Romany word means mixed blood. That’s one meaning, and one use of the word. If you were ours by blood, that is what you would be. The other meaning is also tied in with how it gets used, and it’s just another insult. They throw the same thing at the tinkers, and most of them have got big houses in Ireland as well as bloody big caravans.

Don’t get me wrong, love: they’re people, like us, but they have some really nasty shits among them.

“Anyway, it’s just one of the words they use for us, the straights, as the bikers call them. You’ll get ‘tinker’ as well, and ‘pikey’, and ‘gyppo’, and even ‘hippy’, though we’re not that”

Ken called out “Speak for yourself, woman!” and Lorraine laughed, far easier in her mood than she had been at Gretna.

“Yeah, I’ll give you that, but you never went all silly like bloody Gandalf. Must be years since you used the G- or W-words, as well”

I nudged her before it descended even further into a conversation I would be even more lost in than I already was.

“G-words? Gandalf?”

She turned back to me.

“Hippies, love, and books. Two books in particular. What sort of thing have you read?”

“Dad wasn’t, isn’t… My FATHER isn’t a fan of books. He thinks reading’s for fairies”

“Ah. Well, love, the hippies were into all sorts of shit”

“Are, duck!”

“Oh shut up! Anyway, Debbie, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted…”

“Corrected!”

That last comment from Ken set us all laughing again, but Lorraine found her calm at length, and started another phase of my education.

“Books, love. Books are wonderful things, real books, that is. No pictures but what you see in your own mind’s eye, not like a film with whoever is in fashion when it’s made. And the hippies, one thing they did do was read, shut up, Ken, my turn. A lot of what they read was utter bollocks, but some of it was OK. Two books they got really stuck on were called ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, and ‘The Lord of the Rings’. You heard of them?”

“No”

“Well, don’t laugh, but the first one’s about a Martian. It’s not about Mars, though, but about people on Earth. The writer was using an outsider to look at us in a new way, and the two words you were asking about are ‘grok’ and ‘water brother’. The first one means to understand absolutely everything about something, to really get it. The second one sort of means a really close friend, as close as it is possible to get. The book’s also about what they used to call ‘free love’, shagging whoever and whenever you fancy. You can see how the hippies loved it”

“What’s the other one, then? The ‘Rings’ thing?”

“Ah, that’s a fairy story, all wizards and goblins. Gandalf, in the book, not out by Swansea, he’s the main wizard. Samwise and Rosie are other people in the book”

“You got copies?”

“Ken’s got the Rings somewhere in the back of the van, I think. It’s very, very slow, love. And bloody silly. You can have a read, I suppose. See how you find it”

Ken reached across to pat my knee.

“I’ll have a look later, duck. Now, gets a bit complicated for a while round here. We have another rally for this weekend, which makes up for missing a run along the coast. This one’s called the Border Reiver, Moss Troopers MCC. Out past Brampton. You know the score now, duck!”

Another field, another marquee that Thursday evening, and this time we set up our full camping kit, including the shower, which I really appreciated. Spending so long in heavy waterproof and woolly jumper had left me feeling horribly grimy, and the warm water helped lift my spirits. My hair was slowly coming back, and when Lorraine joined me under the water, she shampooed my head and washed my back for me after an inspection of my wounds.

“You heal well, Deb. Any problems with Number Twos?”

“Was a little uncomfortable when I started again, but getting better, thanks”

“Lovely stuff! Now, can you do my hair for me? Swat anything that crawls out, and we’ll fry it up for our tea!”

Silly, lovely woman.

We spent that Thursday evening sitting out on our version of a patio, under the plastic sheets and tarpaulins that stretched from van to stand and frame tent, the book Lorraine had mentioned in my hand.
“Look in here, Deb. This was what fascinated me when I first got it for him. See the bits in the front? That’s two of Tolkien’s made-up alphabets, and… This bit, love. This explains how it works. I spent ages decoding it!”

I started the book, but it wasn’t working for me, so I did as she had advised, with a pencil and a sheet of paper on my lap, until our chef announced our meal was ready.

Ken had done a one-pot rice dish where a meat stock made from cubes was brought to a simmer before the rice was tipped in. It was fascinating to me back then, as up until that meal, rice for me had meant pudding, and milk. Some tins of beef stew went into a separate pot which he stacked on top of the one holding the rice, and we each devoured a bowl filled with the combination. No strong flavours, apart from the wild mushrooms Lorraine had found, but it was good and filling, and so welcome after ages spent drinking what I suspected had actually been the same thing Ken had cooked into the rice.

I slept happy, warm and content, and for once without the fear that someone else might enter our safe space. Through the night, I could hear the long hoots of what Lorraine told me were tawny owls, and I woke the next morning to a different sound, that of an empty tin can being hit twice. Ken answered that question for me.

“Cock pheasant, duck”

I was feeling so cheerful that morning, I was able to tease.

“What’s a pheasant duck? Is that like a pigeon wren? And are there hen pheasant ducks too?””

“No, but there are sparrow hawks, and turkey vultures in America. I can be far sillier than you can, girl”

“Can’t!”

“Can! Bacon sarnie?”

“Yes please!”

A hug, two hot cups of tea handed to me, and I went out to help Loz set out the stock as my breakfast cooked. The day was starting off brightly, overnight ground mist clearing as the sun burnt through the cold of the night. I looked around for somewhere that might have held owls, guessing it would have been the copse over the old stone wall at the end of the field. I couldn’t remember a better morning; all that was needed to make it perfect would have been a laughing pair of children shouting my name.

More dancing that night, and the next. More T-shirts, stamped-out name badges and leather mitts sold, this time along with what Ken called an experiment: checked scarves of the sort I associated with Arabs. When Sunday arrived, almost all of the bikers leaving the site seemed to be wearing the things in the style of outlaws in cowboy films. I caught Lorraine grinning at him.

“Who’s my clever lover, then? Come here!”

There was nothing half-hearted or token in the kiss she gave him, nor in the way he returned it. What else could I do but step over and hug them both?

Once the last few bikers were away, we went out as a real family, ambling along lanes and poking about in some of the copses, where Lorraine found three different types of mushrooms as well as quite a few chestnuts.

“Lesson, girl. These aren’t conkers, which aren’t very good for you. These are chestnuts. See how the spiny bit is different? We roast these, or we pound them into paste and cook them with other stuff, or all sorts of other tricks. Now… ah, found one!”

She was holding an odd thing that looked like a cross between a dried dog turd and a roll of fluff from under a bed, but her head was tilted back as she seemed to be searching the branches above her.

“Nice and quiet, Deb, but step over to me. Now, look up. Can you see that big branch sticking out to the right? There’s a hole above it, white lips around…”

“Got it”

“Well, look along the branch and… There! He blinked!”

My owl, or at least one of his friends, almost invisible against the foliage.

“How did you know he was there?”

“Ah, Debbie, this thing. It’s an owl pellet. They eat their prey whole, and what they don’t digest, they puke up. If we pulled this apart, it would be full of fur, teeth and mouse skulls. I’m going to put it back, though. Someone might be doing nature work here, and they’ll want to check the pellets”

That was so typical of Lorraine, in that she always seemed to be thinking at least three steps ahead of me, and so often it was of other people. I blessed the luck that had brought me to the two of them, something I knew I would always do.

We ended up with pockets and a small cotton bag full of mushrooms, chestnuts and other edibles, making our way back to the van to pack up and leave one more rally, whose little metal badge now sat with my others on my denim vest. No issues getting out of the field, we headed east as the day continued fine, and the land started to rise again in the distance. For some time, we followed an arrow-straight road until it curved to the right, at which point Ken turned off to the left, into a small town called Greenhead. The road out of the place was a steep one, and the Commer struggled a little, but we made it and emerged on another straight road, the scenery now much more rural, and starting to show similarities to that around the Red Moss, although rather drier. I was amused to see a sign for ‘Walltown’, before realising what it meant.

“Is this Hadrian’s Wall?”

“Yes, duck. We have a spot we can park up for the night, which means we can go for another walk. It’s lovely country along here”

The parking spot was by an old quarry, the digging filled with water, and as Ken turned the van I could see a really odd skyline, steady slopes up from our right before dropping down to our left in cliffs of vertical grey rock broken into parallel columns. Once the van was parked, he started to point things out to me.

“Did you see that sort of double ridge thing we just drove over?”

“On the way in here? Yes”

“Well, that was the old road that ran behind the wall. See the cliff? There’s an old milecastle behind it. The Wall itself runs along the edge of the cliff, and this bit here is also the Pennine Way… Oh. Not heard of that, either, I’ll bet. Right, then, midduck. We park up here, and go for a walk. By the time we get back, all the tourists will be gone, and we can settle down, but I am going to bet there’ll be some campers here with us. Proper shoes on for this, not welly boots, and we are off!”

It reminded me in so many ways of our time at Druridge Bay, which I only realised hours later was the other side of the same county. A steady wind set the grass dancing in waves, which the oddly tilted landscape rather resembled. There were ramblers on the path, all of whom wished us a cheery ‘Good afternoon!’, all of whom were bundled up in waterproofs and gaiters, with rucksacks on their backs. We reached he milecastle, which turned out to be a square of low wall butting up to a longer piece of masonry that I realised, with a surge of excitement was actually THE Wall itself. It was nothing spectacular, but it was rendered so by the situation. It seemed that there was nothing to the North that had any real connection with human beings, more tilted sheets of land marching into the distance, dotted with the white specks of sheep. I knew intellectually that there could be no difference in the sky overhead, that it was the same one that had covered me in Swansea and in Chester, but it felt vaster, clearer, wilder. We stood in line, hand in hand, as I drank in the space and wildness.

There was an odd noise in the distance, a sort of bubbling ‘coorrrr-WEE’, and I looked round to Lorraine, who smiled down at me.

“That one’s a curlew, love. Symbol of the park---er, this is a national park we’re in. One of the finest, in my opinion. Anyway, we’ll go out a bit further, then I am doing omelettes for tea. You OK with that?”

On our return, as predicted, there were three tiny tents on the grass, each containing a different version of what seemed the same man, even though one of them was actually a woman. As we approached the van, Ken walked towards the tiny tents.

“How do! Walking the Way?”

The three looked at each other, and one of them decided to answer us.

“I am, aye, and I assume other two are as well. Last stretch now, and wildest. You’re not planning on playing loud music all night, are you?”

Lorraine put an arm around my shoulders.

“With this one here? Not bloody likely! What we are doing is putting the kettle on, and then I am doing the three of us omelettes. If you would like a brew, maybe share our food round, mix and match, be welcome”

The evening was delightful. There may have been nothing obviously human off to the North, but that evening we found real humanity round a kettle and some frying pans. Later, with every light off, I saw more stars than I had ever seen before. I had found a life at last