We were under the wagon with the swearing and breaking crockery loud above us when I saw Robert Gower come out on to his step with a mug of tea in his hand and his pipe in his mouth.

He nodded good morning to us as if he was deaf to the thuds and screams from our wagon, and sat in the sunshine puffing on his pipe. Jack came out to sit beside his father, but we both stayed in our refuge. If Da was still angry he couldn’t reach us under the wagon unless he poked us out with the butt of the whip, and we were gambling he wouldn’t bend over with the beer still thudding in his head. It was getting quieter above, though Zima had started sobbing noisily, and then she stopped. Dandy and I sat tight until we were sure the storm was over, but Robert Gower walked towards our wagon and called out, ‘Joe Cox?’ when he was three paces from the shafts.

Da came out, we felt the caravan rock above our heads and I pictured him, rubbing frowsty eyes and squinting at the sunlight.

‘You again,’ he said blankly. ‘I thought you didn’t want my fine hunter.’ He hawked and spat over the side of the wagon. ‘D’you want to buy that pretty little pony of ours? He’d look nicely in your show. Or the hunter’s still for sale.’

The fine hunter was still lying down and looked less and less likely to get up. Da did not see it, he was watching Robert Gower’s face.

‘I’m interested in the pony if you can get it broken by the end of the week,’ Robert Gower said. ‘I’ve been watching your lass train it. I doubt she can do it.’

Da spat again. ‘She’s an idle whelp,’ he said dismissively. ‘Her and her good-for-nothing sister. No kin of mine, and I’m saddled with them.’ He raised his voice. ‘And my wife’s a whore and a thief!’ he said louder. ‘And she’s foisted another damned girl brat on me.’

Robert Gower nodded. His white shirt billowed at the sleeves in the clean morning air. ‘Too many mouths to feed,’ he said sympathetically. ‘No man can keep a family of five and make the profits a man needs.’

Da sat down heavily on the step of the wagon. ‘And that’s the truth,’ he said. ‘Two useless girls, one useless whore, and one useless baby.’

‘Why not send them out to work?’ Robert suggested. ‘Girls can always make a living somehow.’

‘Soon as I can,’ Da promised. ‘I’ve never been fixed anywhere long enough to get them jobs, and I swore to their dead ma that I wouldn’t throw them out of her wagon. But soon as I can get them fixed…out they go.’

‘I’d take the littl’un,’ Robert Gower offered nonchalantly. ‘What’s she called? Merry something? She can work with my horses. She’s useless with anything bigger than a pony so she’d be little help to me. But I’d take her off your hands for you.’

Da’s bare cracked feet appeared at the wheels at our heads as we crouched beneath the wagon. He slid off the step and went towards the shining topboots of Robert Gower. ‘You’d take Meridon?’ he said incredulously. ‘Take her to work for you?’

‘I might,’ Gower said. ‘If the terms were right with the pony.’

There was a silence. ‘No,’ Da said, his voice suddenly soft. ‘I couldn’t spare her. I promised her ma, you see. I couldn’t just let her go unless I knew she was going to a good place with ready wages.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Robert Gower said and I saw his shiny black boots walk away. They went for three strides before Da’s dirty feet pattered after.

‘If you gave me her wages in advance, gave them to me, I’d consider it,’ he said. ‘I’d talk it over with her. She’s a bright girl, very sensible. Brilliant with horses you see. All of mine she trains for me. She’s gypsy you see, she can whisper a horse out of a field. I’d be lost without her. She’ll get that pony broken and ridable within a week. You see if she doesn’t. Perfect for your line of work, she is.’

‘Girls are ten a penny,’ Robert Gower said. ‘She’d cost me money in the first year or so. I’d do better taking a proper apprentice with a fee paid to me by his parents. If you’d been willing to give me a good price for the pony I’d have taken whatever-her-name-is off your hands for you. I’ve a big wagon, and I’m looking for a helper. But there’s a lot of bright lads who would suit me better.’

‘It’s a good pony though,’ Da said suddenly. ‘I’d want a good price for it.’

‘Like what?’ Robert Gower said.

‘Two pounds,’ Da said looking for a profit four times what he had paid for the animal.

‘A guinea,’ Robert Gower said at once.

‘One pound twelve shillings and Meridon,’ Da said. I could hear the urgency in his voice.

‘Done!’ Robert Gower said quickly and I knew Da had sold the pony too cheap. Then I gasped as I realized that he had sold me cheap too and, whether Da was hung-over or no, I should be in on this deal.

I squirmed out from under the wagon and popped up at Da’s side as he spat into his palm to shake on the deal.

‘And Dandy,’ I said urgently, grabbing his arm but looking at Robert Gower. ‘Dandy and I go together.’

Robert Gower looked at Da. ‘She’s idle,’ he said simply. ‘You said so yourself.’

‘She can cook,’ Da said desperately. ‘You want someone to keep your wagon nice. She’s a good girl for things like that.’

Robert Gower glanced at his perfect linen and at Da’s torn shirt and said nothing.

‘I don’t need two girls,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m not paying that money for a cheap little pony and two girls to clutter up the wagon.’

‘I won’t come on my own,’ I said and my eyes were blazing green. ‘Dandy and I go together.’

‘You’ll do as you’re told!’ Da exclaimed in a rage. He made a grab for me but I ducked away and got behind Robert Gower.

‘Dandy’s useful,’ I said urgently. ‘She catches rabbits, and she can cook well. She can make wooden flowers and withy baskets. She can do card tricks and dance. She’s very very pretty, you could have her in the show. She could take the money at the gate. She only steals from strangers!’

‘Won’t you come on your own to be with my horses?’ Robert Gower said temptingly.

‘Not without Dandy,’ I said. My voice quavered as I saw my chance of getting away from Da and Zima and the filthy wagon and the miserable life fading fast. ‘I can’t go without Dandy! She’s the only person in the whole world that I love! If I didn’t have her, I wouldn’t love anyone! And what would become of me if I didn’t love anyone at all?’

Robert Gower looked at Da. ‘A guinea,’ he said. ‘A guinea for the pony and I’ll do you a favour and take both little sluts off your hands.’

Da sighed with relief. ‘Done,’ he said and spat in his palm and they shook on the deal. ‘They can come to your wagon at once,’ he said. ‘I’m moving on today.’

I watched him shamble back to the wagon. He was not moving on today. He was running away before Robert Gower changed his mind on the deal. He would celebrate getting a guinea for a pony and cheating Robert Gower – a warm man – out of an eleven shilling profit. But I had a feeling that Robert Gower had planned from the start to pay a guinea for the pony and for me. And maybe he knew from the start that he would have to take Dandy too.

I went back to the wagon. Dandy wriggled out, pulling the baby behind her.

‘I want to take the babby,’ she said.

‘No Dandy,’ I said, as if I were very much older than her and very much wiser. ‘We’ve pushed our luck enough.’


We were on our best behaviour for the rest of that week at the Salisbury fair. Dandy went out to the Common outside the town and brought back a meat dinner every day.

‘Where are you getting it from?’ I demanded in an urgent whisper as she spooned out a rabbit stew thick and chunky with meat.

‘There’s a kind gentleman in a big house on the Bath road,’ she said with quiet satisfaction.

I put the bowls out on the table and dropped the horn-handled spoons with a clatter.

‘What d’you have to do for it?’ I asked anxiously.

‘Nothing,’ she said. She shot me a sly smile through a tumbling wave of black hair. ‘I just have to sit on his knee and cry and say, “Oh! Please don’t Daddy,” like that. Then he gives me a penny and sends me out through the kitchen and they give me a rabbit. He says I can have a pheasant tomorrow.’

I looked at her with unease. ‘All right,’ I said unhappily. ‘But if he promises you a rib of beef or a leg of lamb or a proper joint you’re not to go back again. Could you run away if you had to?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said airily. ‘We sit near the window and it’s always open. I could be out in minutes.’

I nodded, only slightly relieved. I had to trust Dandy with these weird frightening forays of hers into the adult world. She had never been caught. She had never been punished. Whether she was picking pockets or dancing to please elderly gentlemen with skirts held out high; she always came home with a handful of coins and no trouble. She was as idle as a well-fed cat around the caravan. But if she sensed trouble or danger she could slip through a man’s hands and be gone like quicksilver.

‘Call them,’ she said, nodding towards the doorway.

I went out to the step and called: ‘Robert! Jack! Dinner!’

We were on first-name terms now, intimate with the unavoidable closeness of caravan-dwellers. Jack and Dandy sometimes exchanged a secret dark smile, but nothing more. Robert had seen how they were together the very first evening we had spent in the caravan and had pulled off his boots and started blacking them, looking at Dandy under his blond bushy eyebrows.

‘Look here, Dandy,’ he had said, pointing the brush at her. ‘I’ll be straight with you, and you can be straight with me. I took you on because I thought you’d do nicely in the show. I have some ideas which I’ll break open to you later. Not now. Now’s not the time. But I can tell you you could have a pretty costume and dance to music and every eye in the place would be on you. And every girl in the place would envy you.’

He paused, and satisfied with the effect of this appeal to her vanity went on: ‘I’ll tell you what I want for my son,’ he said. ‘He’s my heir and he’ll have the show when I’m gone. Before then I’ll find him a good hard-working girl in the shows business like us. A girl with a good dowry to bring with her, and best of all an Act and a Name of her own. A Marriage of Talents,’ he said softly to himself.

He broke off again, and then recollected where he was and went on. ‘That’s the best I can do for the both of you,’ he said fairly. ‘Where you weds or beds is your own affair, but you’ll not lack offers if you keeps clean and stays with my show. But if I catch you mooning over my lad, or if he puts his hand up your skirt, you just remember that I’ll put you out of this wagon on the high road wherever we are. However you feel. And I won’t look back. And my lad Jack won’t look back either. He knows which side his bread is buttered, and he might have you once or twice, but he’ll never wed you. Not in a thousand years.’

Dandy blinked.

‘See?’ Robert said with finality.

Dandy glanced at Jack to see if he had anything to say in her defence. He was resolutely buffing the white of his topboots. His head bent low over his work. You would have thought him deaf. I looked at the dark nape of his neck and knew he was afraid of his father. And that his father had spoken the truth when he said that Jack would never go against him. Not in a thousand years.

‘What about Meridon?’ Dandy said surly. ‘You don’t warn her off your precious son.’

Robert shot a quick look at me and then smiled. ‘She’s not a whore-in-the-making,’ he said. ‘All Meridon wants from Jack and me is a chance to ride our horses.’

I nodded. That much was true.

‘D’you see?’ Robert asked again. ‘I’d not have taken you into my wagon if I’d known you and Jack were smelling of April and May. But I can put you out here and you’d still have a chance of finding your da again. He won’t have got far – not with that damned old carthorse of his pulling that wagon! You’d best go if you’re hot for Jack. I won’t have it. And it won’t happen without my letting.’

Dandy looked once more at the back of Jack’s head. He had started on the other boot. The first one was radiantly white. I thought he had probably never worked so hard on it before.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You can keep your precious son. I didn’t want him so much anyway. Plenty of other young men in the world.’

Robert beamed at her, he loved getting his own way. ‘Good girl!’ he said approvingly. ‘Now we can all live together with a bit of comfort. I’ll take that as your word, and you’ll hear no more about it from me.