him. But instead of looking pleased he just mumbled, a bit embarrassed, no, almost like he was sorry about something, ‘Glad it meets with your approval, Jason.’ Only when Mum dished up the stew did I even remember the knife grinder’s visit.
‘Knife grinding?’ Dad forked off some gristle to one side. ‘That’s a gypsy scam, old as the hills. Surprised he didn’t get his Tarot cards out, there on the porch. Or start scavving for scrap metal. If he comes back, Jason, shut the door on him. Never encourage those people. Worse than Jehovah’s Witnesses.’
‘He said he might,’ now I felt guilty for making that promise, ‘come back to talk about the driveway.’
‘What about the driveway?’
‘It needs retarmacking. He said.’
Dad’s face’d turned thundery. ‘And that makes it true, does it?’
‘Michael,’ Mum said, ‘Jason’s just reporting a conversation.’
Beef gristle tastes like deep-seam phlegm. The only real live gypsy I ever met was a quiet kid at Miss Throckmorton’s. His name’s gone now. He must’ve skived off most days ’cause his empty desk became a sort of school joke. He wore a black jumper instead of green and a grey shirt instead of white, but Miss Throckmorton never once did him up for it. A Bedford truck used to drop him off at the school gates. In my memory that Bedford truck’s as large as the whole school. The gypsy kid’d jump down from the cabin. His dad looked like Giant Haystacks the wrestler, with tattoos snaking up his arms. Those tattoos and the glance he shot round the playground made sure no one, not Pete Redmarley, not even Pluto Noak, thought about picking on the gypsy kid. For his part, the gypsy kid sat under the cedar sending out piss off waves. He didn’t give a toss about Kick-the-Can or Stuck-in-the-Mud. One time, he was at school for a rounders match and he whacked the ball clean over the hedge and into the Glebe. He just strolled round the posts with his hands in his pockets. Miss Throckmorton had to put him in charge of scoring ’cause we ran out of rounders balls. But when we next looked at the scoreboard he’d gone.
I blobbed HP sauce into my stew. ‘Who are gypsies, Dad?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well…where did they live originally?’
‘Where do you think the word “gypsy” is from? Egyptian.’
‘So gypsies’re African?’
‘Not now, no. They migrated centuries ago.’
‘Why don’t people like them?’
‘Why should decent-minded citizens like layabouts who pay nothing to the state and flout every planning regulation in the book?’
‘I think,’ Mum sprinkled pepper, ‘that’s a harsh assessment, Michael.’
‘You wouldn’t if you’d ever met one, Helena.’
‘This knife grinder chap made an excellent job of the scissors and knives, last year.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Dad’s fork stopped in mid-air, ‘you know this man?’
‘Well, a knife grinder’s been coming to Black Swan Green every October for years. Couldn’t be sure if it’s the same one without seeing him, but I’d imagine he probably is.’
Dad’s cutlery clinked as he put it down. ‘You kept this…transaction hushed up for a whole year?’
‘“Hushed up”?’ Mum did a silent huh of strategic shock. ‘You’re accusing me of “hushing up”?’ (That made my guts quease. Dad flashed Mum this Not in front of Jason look. That made my guts quease and shudder.) ‘Doubtless I didn’t want to clutter your executive day with trivial housewifery.’
‘And how much,’ Dad wasn’t backing off, ‘did this vagrant rip you off for?’
‘He asked for one pound and I paid it. For sharpening all the knives, and a jolly good job he made of them. One pound. A penny more than one of your frozen Greenland pizzas.’
‘I can’t believe you fell for this gypsy-shire-horses-painted-wagons-jolly-old-England hokum. For God’s sakes, Helena. If you want a knife sharpener buy one from an ironmonger’s. Gypsies are work-shy hustlers and once you give them an inch, a horde of his cousins’ll be beating a path back to your door till the year 2000. Knives, crystal balls and tarmacking today, and car-stripping, raids on garden sheds, flogging stolen goods tomorrow.’
Their arguments’re speed chess these days.
I’d finished. ‘Can I get down now, please?’
It’s Thursday so I watched Top of the Pops and Tomorrow’s World up in my room. I heard kitchen cupboards being slammed. I put on a cassette Julia’d made for me from Ewan’s LPs. The first song’s ‘Words (Between The Lines Of Age)’ by Neil Young. Neil Young sings like a barn collapsing but his music’s