Sarah Wimbush

Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands


Never be surprised what gorgios say. Never mention Daddy
            juggled pennies on the back of a donkey.
                        Never explain that Liza married the son of a king,

or how Gentle Hugh received the Mons Star, posthumously.
            Don’t point out the in-between places. Don’t speak
                        of your love for a deadwood fire, and pretty-wear,

and how bare-knuckle fighting is as much a part of who you are
            as something they call ‘class’. Never tell anyone
                        when the visions come, that you collect dead

women’s earrings, that you have always been frightened of water,
            except during a thunderstorm, when you stand
                        at the lane end and burn like a flame in a lantern.

Never smoke a pipe until you’re at least ten and steer clear
            of them North Country folk with their hob-cobbled jib.
                        Never go to the fields in your grubbers,

wear a skirt and change behind a tree, and never ever let the lass
            next to you pull peas quicker than you.
                        Never kiss a lad – you’ll get in the family way,

and never get in the family way unless he’ll do a runner with you.
            After, he’s to torch the bender, straw ticks, corrupt linen.
                        Never allow jukels inside the vardo,

or boil shimmies with pudding cloths, or leave a wound to turn –
            rinse with your own water or bind in a spider’s web.
                        Never chor what does not belong to you, or God,

and you’ll do well my girl, to be match and master both
            with your old fella. Always keep one boot on the ground,
                        tell your children’s children their blood names,

and if, one day, you’re in the company of gorgios,
            mind when to leave the book of your mouth open,
                        when to fold it into a crossed knife.


__________

gorgio: non-Gypsy/ Traveller; bender: tent; jukels: dogs; vardo: horse-drawn caravan; chor: take


*


A Sund’y in Worksop


That morning, we pitch our caravans on Joe White’s,
somewhere on Sime Street. Mother scrubs vardo floors
with washday waste, singing Paddy McGinty’s Goat or maybe

I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen. Daddy has a bloke to see
at The Old Ship Inn or perhaps The Robin Hood, God’s people
blinking as they enter daylight. I stay with the tub cart

or was it the dray, water Plunk our dapple pony, or was it Spike
or was it Pluck? A school of men march into the yard, keen to win
a fortune with Pitch and Toss. From a corner the look-out boy

watches me. Beneath the sign, ‘No Gambling Or Spitting’,
the chuckers bless a fat penny each and bowl against the wall,
or could it have been into the air? Metals wield and thud.

Hoots and oaths. The men drift away, one lad left on the floor
or maybe leant against the wall, says over, fot in’t war, I did –
and he has no hat. Or was it boots? Or was it both?


__________

vardo: horse-drawn caravan


*


Gran Violet Applies a Poultice


I know good health stays with the child
born under a rising moon

and the sting of a honey bee’s bite
can be eased with pollen from a meadow’s bloom

and toothache’s gnaw held at bay
by chewing wild garlic or cloves

and a spoonful of honey and elderberry
wards off winter’s snivelling colds.

I know a tincture of burdock root
clears scurvy, bad blood and poor complexions

and being bunged up is easily solved
by scrumping a handful of Victoria plums

and a cup of fresh juniper bark,
rolled and steeped, relieves weary bones

and dandelion sap or well-hung pork fat
works like magic on warts and moles.

I know witchbane nailed to the eaves
forfends crawlers and the evil eye

and when they hang me from the crooked tree
I may walk-on but I never shall die.


*


STOP!


It starts with hearts. Red and broken on a soap-box behind a criss-cross
of barbed wire. We pull up a car tyre, drag shop fittings out of a ditch,

throw on sapling oaks, half a besom, unhinge a litter bin. The village
comes out in support, donates a lion’s roar and a bedstead in case of a nifty kip,

and more: an oil drum and a strip-a-gram for entertainment; skinny roll-ups,
and chips and scraps for snap; Welly lock-ins and two football teams

to keep us sane. Mothers bolster us with pit props and builder’s brew –
housecoat grenades. A window cleaner gifts his ladder for a quick escape.

All anchored down with women’s tights and washing line, and yet, we wonder
how far do powder-monkeys and rippers have to go to save their jobs?

Still, we stand firm on the wooden plank. We are stoked, and black
and white, young and old; eye to eye and pole to pole beside the winding gear.

This barricade is our pyramid; our eagle’s nest on Everest, our stage.
They beckon from afar call it time, lads. We show a sign, we have our say.


*


Near Extinction


I
No otters in the River Don.
No rest for Sylvia Grant-Dalton
upholding Brodsworth Hall: subsidence
scribbled on the wall –
the roof a drain, gardens besieged.
A losing battle.

Down the lane, Brian
at Brodsworth pit
with his mullet and denim jacket:
windswept, sun-kissed – convinced
they can turn the tide
in landlocked South Yorkshire.


II
Rossington. Like Beirut,
says Mrs Selby, watching ghosts
of picket line past –
burned-out cars,
burned-out hearts.
Mr Selby in his chair, waiting
for the snowdrops.

An action shot of Lesley Boulton:
camera in hand, the raised baton –
a pin-up girl at Highfields Welfare.
Wives on battle stations
in the soup kitchen.
Men fed first.


III
Outside the new Frenchgate Centre –
a band of brothers riddled with badges,
rattle buckets – ‘Miners Children’s Xmas Party’
all around the world turned
outside in.

Paul, just nineteen, marching back
with the shift and his Grandad
to Markham Main: end of the line,
final man down, under that headgear –
the last dinosaur in Doncaster.

 

        I
    11     House
    12     White Cottage
    13     Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands
    14     Mother Tongue
    16     Dukkering
    17     Carroty Kate 
    18     Gran Violet Applies a Poultice
    19     Gal
    20     The Hedgehog’s Tale
    21     John Thomas
    22     Pitched early mornin’ at encampment o’ Gypsy king Esau Smith
    23     Scrapping at Marshall’s Engineering, Gainsborough
    24     I can see Sandbeck Hall
    25     Them Dunstan Kids
    26     Our Jud
    27     Threshin’
    28     Straw Ticks
    29     Bedsheet
    30     Meat Puddin’
    31     Laneham Ferry
    32     The Bittern
    33     The Calling Basket
    34     A Sund’y in Worksop
    35     Late Afternoon by a Hedge
    36     Census 1911
    37     Earring
    38     The Ring
    39     Walking Girl
    40     The Astronaut Who Came to Tea
    42     In the Library
    43     Gifts
    44     Bloodlines

        II
    46     Pilgrim Queens
    47     Things My Mother Taught Me
    48     Inside Lingerie
    49     2:15 at Doncaster
    50     The Pencil Sharpener
    51     Giant Leaping
    52     I learned to drive in a metallic blue Ford Capri
    53     Visiting My Aunt on Her Birthday, 1st September 1979
    54     Uncle Reg
    55     Between Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and My Class Enjoys Cooking
    56     Rebel
    57     A Spring Morning
    58     Vixen
    59     Pompocali
    60     Trip to the National Portrait Gallery, with the wife
    61     The Powder-monkey’s Apprentice
    62     Peasholm Park
    63     Blood Sugar
    64     William Shaw is lowered down the shaft
    65     Hillards
    66     STOP!
    67     Rosso Youthy 1984
    68     Near Extinction
    70     Markham Main
    71     The York, Edlington
    72     The Lost
    74     Our Language

    77     Acknowledgements