Short Story: Paint Your Wagon

Short Story: Paint Your Wagon

Paint Your Wagon

‘Ouch!’ said Dorothy, ‘Wot you doing, William? Wetting the bed?’

She gave him a push and he rolled across the floor of the caravan and woke up, grumbling.

‘No, no,’ he protested, ‘I aren’t doing nothing. It’s the rain, can’t you ‘ear it? Wot you woke me up for? Just move over. Didn’t Nonna give you a tin to catch them drips?’

‘Yes, but they make a noise drip, drip, dripping all the time an’ they’re keepin’ me awake, as well as making it all wet.’ Dorothy was close to tears but didn’t want to add to her discomfort.

‘We’ll have to try and mend the wagon,’ declared William. ‘’Ere, put this sack over yer ‘ead and try to go back to sleep.’

With Nonno, their grandfather, being away, it was difficult to see how the gypsy kids could repair the roof of their wagon. It needed roofing felt and that costs money. They were tired of making pegs, and the heather was not very pretty at this time of year. Their granny, Nonna, had been laid up and couldn’t make many baskets.

‘We could go down the dump and see if anyone ‘as been stripping off an old shed or something,’ William suggested.

‘It’s too smelly down the dump,’ moaned Dorothy, ‘and you know the other kids throw rocks if we go near.’

‘Well, we could go down there when they’re in school,’ William replied, ignoring Dorothy’s protests. ‘Aren’t you glad we don’t ‘ave to go, stuck indoors all day? Gives me the creeps.’

Dorothy didn’t answer. The idea of school was just a dream, but she kept it to herself and never let on. Gypsy kids don’t do school.

‘The wagon could do with a lick of paint too, don’t you think?’ William said, breaking into her thoughts.

‘Where would we get some paint from? It costs a fortune.’

Later on, they searched high and low in the village rubbish dump but only found small rotting scraps of roofing felt that disintegrated as they touched them.

‘It’s no good, William,’ said Dorothy. ‘We’ll have to think of summat else. How many jars have we got recently? Perhaps we could take them to Ma Groggins, see if she knows anyone who’s mending their shed or their chicken house.’

When they got to the Groggins’ place, it must have been gypsies luck or just a coincidence that Old Farmer Groggins was repairing his chicken house. A fox had ripped the felt covering to pieces in her frantic need to feed her cubs.

‘Three of me best layers that pesky critter got, and left some more headless,’ the old farmer grumbled as he measured out long strips of roofing felt. Then he heard the scrape of metal as Dorothy and William came through the farm gate. His first reaction was to chase them away but he caught sight of Ma Groggins looking through the kitchen window at the kids.

‘Why does that daft woman come all over soppy-like when she sees them dirty urchins?’ he muttered to himself. He looked over to the two gypsy kids.‘What d’you two want, then?’ he yelled.

‘If you please, sir,’ said Dorothy, trying hard not to turn and run away, ‘We’ve got some jars for the Missus.’

And before Farmer Groggins could say anything more, the kitchen door opened and his wife came bustling out, wiping her hands on her flour-spattered apron. She had a broad grin on her full red face as she held out her arms to the two children.

‘We’ve brought some jars for you, missus,’ said William, holding out a grubby sack. ‘They’re nice and clean ‘cos we washed them in the river over and over.’

‘I’ve been waiting for some more,’ exclaimed Ma Groggins. ‘I used up all the last lot. Nearly blackberry time and I’m going to make jam. P’raps you two could help me pick some, if you’ve got nothin’ else to do sometime? How many jars you got? See if I have some pennies for them…’

‘If you please, missus,’ cut in William, ‘We don’t want any money this time, we was ‘oping that you might have some pieces of roofing felt. You see, the rain keeps coming in our wagon and, with Nonno away and that, we’ve got nothing to mend the roof with.’

‘Well, I never!’ laughed Ma Groggins, ‘I think you just might be in luck. Look there, Groggins has just stripped off that hen house, I’m sure he can sort you out some of the better bits for your wagon. He’ll only burn them else. Let’s go over and ask him.’

‘At least we’ve got one friend in the village,’ Dorothy said, as they trudged back to their leaky wagon. William carried a roll of felt pieces and Dorothy a bag which Ma Groggins had given her when the were leaving. It contained some vegetables and a headless chicken that the fox had left in the raided hen house.

‘Just a little summat for your dinner,’ she had said. ‘Give you strength to mend that roof of yours. Don’t forget you’re coming to help me with them blackberries now. Might even find you a few more jobs around the farm.’

Dorothy had told Ma Groggins about their plans to decorate the wagon as well as mend it. But paint was hard to come by and way beyond their means. They felt rather ashamed of the peeling and faded state of their home on wheels.

‘We’ve just got to get some paint from some place, Dorothy. Can’t you think of how to get some?’ William was whittling away at some sticks making dolly pegs for the next market. He was getting good at the job. Dorothy was sitting on the steps of the wagon making some twigs of heather into lucky bunches. She stopped to draw patterns in the sand and was dreaming about coloured ones they could paint on the wagon. Bits of wood shavings blew across her drawings. She jumped up.

‘Got it. Let’s go and see ol’ Jason.’

‘Who?’

‘You know, William, the old toy-maker. He always has plenty of paints for his toys. You’ve seen him at the fairs. Everybody buys from him. And look at his wagon, it’s always as bright and cheerful as a meadow full of flowers. Come on, William. If you do some whittling for ‘im, he might let us have some paint, even if it’s some scrapings out the bottoms of the tins. I could do sweeping up or something.’

William looked doubtful. He knew that he was not very good at wood carving yet. But Dorothy told him not to be such a misery, so they made their way to Jason’s wagon. Such a beauty it was, very bright and cheerful, in true gypsy style. He never let the paint peel or the patterns fade.

‘You couldn’t find any jobs for us to do, could you, please, Jason?’ Dorothy was so desperate, she had overcome her fear of the old gypsy. Gathering up a little more courage, she went on, ‘You see, we love all the colours on your wagon and we wants to make ours the same, but we don’t know how to get any paint, do we William?’ She got bolder. ‘He’s good at whittling and could help you do some of them dolls for the next fair and I could try some painting. I like making flowers and patterns and such.’

By the time she had finished speaking, the toymaker was so impressed with their enthusiasm, he told them to come back in a day or two and he’d see what he could find for them to do. They tried to stay patient but it wasn’t easy. To take their minds off the coming venture, they decided to get on with mending the roof. Dorothy insisted that William should do the job, as he was the lighter than her.

‘We don’t want to put a foot through, now do we?’ she giggled at William as he spread-eagled himself on his belly and slowly pulled himself up onto the roof. He didn’t want Dorothy to see how scared he was, being so high above the ground. He just tried not looking down.

‘Throw up the biggest bit of felt and I’ll see if it stretches over the hole,’ he yelled to Dorothy.

‘You don’t have to shout, I’m not that far away,’ came a voice from almost beside him. He turned to see that Dorothy had climbed a nearby tree, dragging the pieces of felt in a bundle across her shoulders. She wedged herself between two branches and started to throw the pieces across to William.

‘Here’s the tricky bit,’ she warned. ‘Warm the bits up with this candle and then drip on some wax before sticking it onto the roof. You’ll have to be quick before it sets. It’s the only way I can think of doing it.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, I do wish Nonno was here to help us.’

Slowly but surely, they managed to put several patchy layers of felt onto the caravan roof.

‘That should keep some of the rain out, anyway. You did a good job, William.’

Dorothy had begun to climb out of the tree when she heard a wail behind her. She turned to see William rolling slowly off the roof towards the ground, fear having eventually taken over and he could stand it no longer. Fortunately, he fell into a pile of hay and was shaken but not hurt.

The smell of chicken stew came from behind the wagon. Nonna was cooking supper. The kids soon tucked in, pleased with themselves and their hard day’s work.

‘We’ll go and see ol’ Jason early in the morning,’ said Dorothy.

‘If it rains tonight,’ mused Nonna, puffing on her clay pipe, ‘I don’t reckon we’ll get wet, after all that hard work.’

Jason’s wagon was a thing of colour and beauty, brightly painted flowers and butterflies covering it completely. But when the kids went inside, they were bowled over. The shelves were lined with every kind of wooden toy you could imagine, painted every colour of the rainbow. The smell of paint and wood mingled together and tickled their noses. The floor was covered in wood shavings and Dorothy’s fingers itched to get hold of a broom and sweep them up.

William was looking crestfallen, because he was not so good at whittling after all. He could manage to make dolly pegs, but any other figures seemed to be beyond him. After he’d had a go at a dozen or so, either the noses were too long or fell off with the wrong cut. The eyes didn’t match or the scored-out hair was part straight and part curly where William’s hand had got tired. The figures had lumps and bumps all in the wrong places. Some of the animals had three legs and others had five.

‘Those figures look like them gargoyles on the old village church,’ laughed Old Jason. William was near to tears. He had really tried hard. Dorothy hid her disappointment by sweeping harder, but she wanted to know what gargoyles were.

‘They’re supposed to keep the bad spirits away and all that, I think.’ Old Jason seemed to be clutching at straws, but had to answer somehow.

‘So maybe if I paint William’s carvings,’ said Dorothy, ‘ people might buy them at the fair, thinking they were these ‘gargles’ on the church then and they’d keep the bad spirits away.’

‘Could be a waste of time, young ‘un,’ replied Old Jason, ‘but at least it’s worth a try. Daft women buy anything these days if it’s to do with superstitions and that.’

Dorothy was not quite sure what he meant but eagerly grabbed one of William’s monstrosities and, turning it over and over, started to paint. She made sure the eyes were big and scary, the noses the brightest red and the bellies fat and round. She concentrated so hard that when she laid down her paintbrush, she had finished dozens of the odd creatures.

Old Jason was amused when he managed to sell most of them at the fair. although they caused a lot of arguments; whether they were lucky or unlucky; trolls or elves; monsters or lucky mascots. In exchange, he gave Dorothy all the pots of paint he’d almost finished with. He gave her some turpentine to soften the paints and make them easier to use.

If William wasn’t too good at whittling, he was rubbish at painting and Dorothy soon let him know it. She told him to go up to the common and look at the rabbit snares. When he’d gone Dorothy worked away in earnest on the caravan, loving every moment of it and making the patterns shine like jewels. Nonna sat on the steps and muttered a few encouraging words and correcting her when she thought the colours were wrong.

It was getting dark when William got back with two fat rabbits. He gave them immediately to Nonna, eager to earn her praise. And then he saw the wagon glowing with its new paint, and he just stood and stared and stared.