Gypsy Jane. Jane Lee
how people went out shooting birds and animals. I could shoot wrong ’uns all day long but a defenceless animal that never hurt anyone? No, sorry. It’s not me.
I wasn’t that good a shot at first but with practice I got a lot better. By this time John was about eight and I soon saw that he was a natural. The boy didn’t even need a sight. He just pointed and hit the target every time. I remember there was a clay pigeon show, which John entered, and he scored an incredible 39 out of 40. I was so proud. In fact, he had only missed the first one as he had never used a shotgun before and the weight of it threw him off a bit.
But more than winning competitions, the best part of our new ability was that, if we received any more threatening phone calls from dodgy garage owners – or anyone else, come to it – we were ready for a war. Now, I can hear you asking yourself – why didn’t I simply call the police and let them deal with everything? Well, as I’m sure you have gathered having heard about my background, you just didn’t do that. And anyway, I knew no fear. You see, blokes think us women are helpless. But, believe me, boys, there is a lot more to some of us than meets the eye. One of my friends went on a job and his gun blew up in his own hand. I’ve never had one blow up on me. Why? They are all tested and ready to go before I use them. Then there was the mate who did a jeweller’s. This one was a success but the getaway driver had some trouble and couldn’t do it so they got a replacement. But when they came running out the shop with bags of gold and diamonds and their sawn-offs, they found the car was not there. They had to run back into the shop, alarms going off everywhere, when the driver suddenly pulled up outside and they ran out, all panicking. When they asked the driver where he had been, this idiot said he had been to the shop to get a can of Coke. I think I would have shot him myself if he was on a job with me. I couldn’t stop laughing. Oh, it did get funny, you know. Nothing is ever perfect, is it? We can only try our best but you do need good common sense. No education can beat a bit of common sense.
I had got myself properly armed and my cousin Kathy had moved in, as she was now my best friend as well as family. Kathy had come over to England from her home country of Ireland when she was ten or eleven. She was my saviour, as having her around made it easier to live with Brett. John was growing up fast. We hadn’t got much but I hadn’t done anything that could get me shot or ‘lifed’ off. He was so handsome and the perfect son. I was blessed when I had him. He was the most precious thing life could ever give me and I didn’t want to put that in jeopardy. But Brett had been on the dole for a while after the garage incident and he couldn’t provide for himself, let alone me and John. In fact, it was still the other way around. I knew I could provide if I needed to and it looked like that was the way things were going. We were paying everything between us but now I was paying it all. But for the time being I wasn’t breaking the law. I was just bending the rules a bit.
Brett’s sister-in-law owned a cafe and I was running it for her. Meanwhile, Kathy was looking after John indoors during the day while I was at work and we were surviving. But it’s a small world and I was in the cafe one day when a rich-looking man came in. He was known in the area. He was a regular at the cafe and I’d seen him around enough to recognise him, though I didn’t personally know him. But Brett seemed to – at least, he did a strange thing. He turned absolutely white, dived to the floor and, trying to stay out of sight, slipped out the back way. When I looked up again, that bloke was just standing there. He came up to me and said, ‘I thought I recognised your voice. You’re the bird on the phone with the sawn-off and rottweilers, ain’t you?’ That was when the penny dropped.
‘And you’re the coward that still hasn’t found his balls and brought it on yet, ain’t you?’ I said. I had a big blade from the cafe in my hand under the counter and I was waiting for his next move. I’d come to like this man. He was respectful and it was obvious he fancied me. But although I wasn’t sleeping with Brett – and I couldn’t even stand him anymore – he was still my old man. To the outside world we were a normal family. I despised him but I wouldn’t do him wrong. Now it seemed that the balance had changed. Bring it on, I thought. I know that was a mental thing to wish for but that was just me. Things had happened and I couldn’t go back and still hold my head up, could I?
Then he said, ‘Can I shake your hand, love? I truly apologise for my words on the phone. And, girl, you’ve got some balls on you. Most men would have shit themselves but here’s a woman and she wants a war? I could hardly believe my own ears. I’m truly sorry for putting you through that. I was a bit caught out because you answered the phone instead of your Brett.’
I laughed and accepted his apology as I put the blade under the counter. But I still had to tell him straight about how I felt. I told him he was out of order by involving a bloke’s bird in something she hadn’t had a hand in. He accepted my reprimand like a gent and told me that Brett’s garage debt had now been forgotten by way of an apology to me and that he didn’t have to worry. ‘He wasn’t worried about you anyway,’ I lied, thinking what an embarrassment Brett had become after diving for the floor and running out the back.
Then we suffered a tragedy. Rosie’s ten-year-old daughter, Heather, died of a brain tumour and it crippled me. It was, and still is, the saddest thing that has ever happened to me. I went back to Silvertown and stayed with Rosie for the next two weeks. So did Paul, Rosie’s brother and my lifelong friend. Me and Paul were like brother and sister but I developed other feelings for him during that time and a few months later I met him at the flat and we made love. Brett and I hadn’t been together in that way for the past five years. We were together but more like enemies, just living together. Paul was one of my best friends and he made me feel special, wanted and loved. Something I hadn’t felt for so long. I left Brett that same day and I’ve never seen him since. I also gave up working in the cafe, as it was Brett’s sister-in-law’s, and I was back to ducking and diving to make ends meet. I had known in my heart that this day would come from the night Brett left me and John after he received the phone call that sent him running. I had to fend for myself and I was one step away from being back in the criminal world – the same world I had so desperately tried to leave behind.
But it was Brett who had caused these problems with our once happy family, by sleeping with Mary. It was Brett who brought a night of trouble into our home. And it was the Gran who had brought the guns back into our lives for protection. Jane was slowly slipping away.
Paul, who was five years older than me, moved in but it only lasted a year. To be honest, it all got a bit ugly. We should have never got together because we ruined a lifelong friendship. To cut a long story short, I had heard that Rosie thought I wasn’t good enough for her brother, which was hard to take coming from such a good friend. Rosie and I fell out over it, which I regret to this day. And if I could change anything that I’d ever done, I’d take back my row with Rosie because I lost the best friend I ever had that day. I also regret having been with Paul. Yes, we had our happy times for a while. We even got married. But he had three teenage girls by his ex and they hated me because they thought I was standing in the way of their mum and dad getting back together. The kids were wrong because Paul and his ex had been living separately for two years before I came on the scene. I would never come between a man and his woman. Paul had lived with Rosie for over a year after splitting up and by the time we got together he was living in his flat on his own. It didn’t matter to the kids and that simple fact doomed my relationship with Paul.
I had told him we needed to do his flat up for the kids when they visited him there. So we did it up. It wasn’t much but it was clean and homely. A proper nice flat and it was a clean place for him to see his kids. He needed somewhere like that because he couldn’t see them with his ex. But the children said they wouldn’t go up to the flat if I was there. One day the tyres on my car were slashed outside Paul’s flat so I stopped going. Lies were being told about me to everyone, even after I’d made that shithole of a flat into a home. At the end of the day, his kids weren’t babies. They were teenagers and, to tell you the truth, I’d have liked to have slapped them but I just took it all on the chin because these were Paul’s kids and I knew they were hurting over their mum and dad. I understood but they did piss me off. Still, looking back, I have to take my hat off to them. The loyalty they showed their mum was priceless and I would have done the same in their position.
To make matters worse,