Flamingo Boy. Michael Morpurgo

It was Papa’s idea. It was the biggest town around, he said. Business would be good there, with plenty of customers, lots of children, who might come again and again to have a ride on the carousel. We could stay for a while maybe. Maman liked the idea, as he knew she would. Roma families like us, travelling families, generally we like to keep moving on. But Maman always wanted to stay in a place longer than Papa. We Roma, Vincent, we have a saying. We like to follow the bend in the road, to be free to go where we want.”

      My heart leaped. I hadn’t told her my story of the old traveller and the policeman, and I so wanted her to know it now, that in a way it was following the bend in the road that had brought me here. But I did not dare interrupt her again. I would tell her later.

      “So that’s why we came to Aigues. We found a place for our caravan in a field down by the canal, just across the water from the town walls, where the horse had grass to graze, and water to drink. Honey, our horse was called. Unfortunately, I was the one who had to look after her, see she was fed and watered, pick out her hooves, groom her. Honey was not at all sweet. Badly named she was. Très méchant, ce cheval! She had a wicked temper. I never liked her and she never liked me. But for pulling the caravan she was the best horse we ever had.

      They let us set up our carousel in the square, under the shade of a great plane tree, close to the church and the cafés and the shops, right in the heart of the town. It was a perfect pitch for the Charbonneau Carousel. The town was busy, the people seemed friendly, and, as Papa had said, there were lots of children about, so the rides on the carousel were almost always full. On fine days, when the wind was not blowing, and the rain was not driving in, we did good business.

      We stayed there in Aigues-Mortes, of course, to earn money – everyone has to do that, Vincent, as I am sure you know. But there was another reason why Maman in particular was happy to stay put in one place much longer than usual, as I was soon to discover. Now that I was older – Maman broke the news to me soon after we arrived in Aigues – she told me we would be staying in the town long enough for me to be able to go to school for a while, to learn to read and write. And Aigues, she said, seemed the perfect place for me to start school. I never liked the idea at all. But Maman was very determined. So on weekdays I found myself, like it or not, going off to school, along with all the other children in town. But more of school later.

      After school, and at the weekends, I was still where I most wanted to be, working on the carousel in the town square with Maman and Papa. Papa turned the handle to make it go round. He was as strong as an ox, shoulders and arms as hard as wood. Maman took the money and played the barrel organ, and I helped the children up, and looked after them once the carousel was turning, making sure they did not fall off nor try to jump off while it was turning. But, best of all, I was the one who had to bring in the customers, tempt them in, and I had my own special way of doing it.

      I always chose Horse to ride, because he was the most popular. I would jump up on to his back, and, with the carousel turning, I would shout it out all over the square. “Roll up, roll up for the Charbonneau Carousel! Come along, come along! Have the ride of your life: on Lion, or Tiger, on Elephant, or Dragon, or Bull, or on Horse, this lovely white horse from the Camargue! Roll up, roll up!”

      Then Maman would play her barrel organ for a while to entice everyone in, and I would go on with my shouting. I would hang on to the pole, one-handed, swinging myself out, as Papa turned the carousel round and round. I would leap from ride to ride, whooping with joy, showing the whole town how much fun it was. I loved to show off. I could put on quite a performance, Vincent – you should have seen me! We were a good team, Maman, Papa and me. Some days it could be slow, but most days, especially on market days and weekends, we would soon have children queuing up for a ride, all of them impatient to have their turn, to be off.

      In the darkening summer evenings, the carousel would be a blaze of colour and lights – providing that Papa’s generator worked. Sometimes it did; sometimes it didn’t. It was – how do you say this? – a bit temperamental, that machine. Everyone in the town loved hearing Maman’s barrel organ and watching the carousel going round. In the spring and summer of every year, the Charbonneau family carousel was the heart and soul of Aigues-Mortes, and that made me very proud.

      But, much as the townspeople might have loved the bright lights and music and the fun of our carousel, there were a few who did not like us, who shunned us in the street. I was still young, and I could not understand why. It upset me greatly, and made me angry too. Maman told me to pay no attention, that this was just how some people were, and that I would have to get used to it, that there were kind people in this world, and nasty people. That was just how it was. But I never really understood any of this properly, not until I went to school.”

      

       CHAPTER 8

       Rousel Rousel!

      “I never wore shoes in the summer, as all the other children did. And the clothes that Maman had made for me – the long red skirt I always wore – did not look like anything they wore. And I had long, straggly dark hair down to my shoulders. My hair did not look like their hair. Some of them would sneer at me, and say how poor I must be to live in a caravan and not in a proper house. Soon enough, though, I realised there was more to it than that. There were other reasons, deeper reasons, I discovered, for their hostility. I was Roma, a “gypsy”, to them. I was “gyppo girl”. I looked different. I had darker skin than most of them – and that was true, of course – but they said I was dirty, which I was not. It was also because I could not read or write as they could – which was true as well. That, after all, was why Maman had sent me to school.

      Some of them just avoided me, looked the other way, or walked off. I could tell also that they were nervous of me, and I did not understand why they should be. I mean it was true that if someone taunted me, if someone picked a fight – boy or girl – I always fought back and I always won. I was good at fighting. Winning was my way to survive in that school, whether in fights or in races. I found I could run faster, jump further, stand on my hands for longer than anyone else, do somersaults and backflips better than any of them. But none of that helped me to make friends.

      There were some children – and a few teachers too, sad to say – who made it quite clear they did not like having me in their school, or even in their town. When I told Papa and Maman about all this, both of them told me to be proud and ignore them. But it was hard for me to realise that so many of those children who loved riding on our carousel, whom I had often helped climb up on to Tiger or Horse or Elephant, had in fact despised me all along, and not just me, but Maman and Papa too, all Roma people like us.

      I was glad we lived away from them, in our caravan outside the town walls, on the other side of the canal. But I never minded at all being in the town square, working on the carousel. I was so proud of it, of Maman and Papa, and anyway I loved the bustle of the place. I did miss my Roma friends and family, though. I was away from my cousins, who were really my only friends, with whom we so often travelled during the rest of the year. Until the day I met Lorenzo, I had no one in that town I could really call a friend.

      As I said, it was on a market day in spring in the school holidays that Lorenzo first came into my life. The carousel was turning, the music was playing, the rides were full of laughing children, all enjoying themselves. I was enjoying myself – everyone was. I noticed then a boy jumping up and down on the far side of the square. Even far away, I could see he was in a state of high excitement, waving his arms and clapping with joy at the sight of the carousel. Then he was taking his mother’s hand and dragging her towards us. I was used to seeing children come skipping up to the carousel, begging to be allowed to have a ride. The music drew them in – like moths to a flame, Papa always said – and I could see that this particular moth, this clapping boy, was fluttering with frantic excitement. The next time I came round on the carousel, he was